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CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2016 


https://archive.org/details/charlesfollenmck00gran_0 





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CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK 

BY 

ALFRED HOYT GRANGER 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 


'■'•Perfection in whatever he undertook." 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 


M DCCCCXI 1 1 


COPYRIGHT, I9I3, BY ALFRED HOYT GRANGER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published November 1913 


THE GETTY CEMItrt 
LiBftAliY 


TO 

WILLIAM RUTHERFORD MEAD 

THE LAST OF A GREAT TRIUMVIRATE 








PREFACE 


The preparing of this short memoir has been in- 
spired by the desire to set before the younger members 
of the Architectural profession and particularly the 
draughtsmen in offices, something of the personality 
of a very great man. It must remain for some other 
pen than mine to write a complete analytic life of 
Charles F. McKim. Since his death, new schools of 
Architecture have grown up which, inspired perhaps 
by the restless spirit of the age in which we live, seem 
like the Athenians of old, to be eagerly striving after 
some new thing. With this spirit McKim, and the 
wonderful group of men with whom he both worked 
and played, could have but little sympathy. He stood 
for a national architecture, inspired by beauty and 
built upon the solid foundations of law, order and tra- 
dition. It is the abiding quality of the principles in 
accordance with which he lived and worked and died 
that I have tried to make plain. In order to do this, I 
have had to call upon his friends, his family and above 
all upon his only surviving partner for co-operation 
and help. To them all I wish to express here my deep 


PREFACE 


and heartfelt thanks. They have given me far more 
than I have asked, and it is they alone who have made 
this little work possible. 

ALFRED HOYT GRANGER. 

Philadelphia, 1913. 


CONTENTS 


I. Foreword 3 

II. Ancestry, Training, and Early Work 8 

III. The Boston Public Library 22 

IV. Discussion of Various Buildings 32 

V. The World’s Fair at Chicago 49 

VI. The Park Commission Plan of the District 

of Columbia 59 

VII. The Pennsylvania Terminal 76 

VIII. The American Academy at Rome 86 

IX. McKim the Man 103 

X. The Two Memorial Meetings 116 

Appendix: The Presentation of the Royal 
Gold Medal to Mr. McKim by the 
Royal Institute of British Archi- 
tects 

The President’s Address 137 

Mr. McKim’s Response 141 









ILLUSTRATIONS 


Charles Follen McKim. From a Pastel Portrait 
by Miss Emmet, loaned by the Harvard Club 
of New York (Photogravure) Frontispiece 

James Miller McKim. From a Photograph loaned 

by Francis J. Garrison (Photogravure) 8 

Sarah Allibone McKim. From a Portrait loaned 

by Mrs. Charles D. Norton (Photogravure) 10 

Boston Public Library from Copley Square 22 

Plan of Ground Floor, Boston Public Library 24 
Plan of Reading-Room Floor, Boston Public 
Library 24 

Main Entrance, Boston Public Library 26 

Main Staircase, Boston Public Library 28 

Bates Hall, Boston Public Library 28 

Courtyard, Boston Public Library 30 

Exterior of the Harvard Club, New York 32 

Exterior of the Century Club, New York 32 

Dining-Hall, Harvard Club, New York 34 

Johnston Gates, Harvard University 34 

Exterior of the University Club, New York 36 

The Great Hall, University Club 36 


xi 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Main Dining-Room, University Club 36 

Detail of the University Club Library 36 

The Gorham Building, New York 38 

Exterior of the Villard Houses, New York 38 

The Library of Columbia University 40 

The White House, showing restored East Wing 42 
State Dining-Room of the White House 42 

Exterior of the Bank of Montreal, St. James 

Street 44 

Main Banking-Room, Bank of Montreal 44 

Interior of the National City Bank, New York 44 
Exterior of the Morgan Library, New York 46 

Vestibule of the Morgan Library 46 

Interior of the Morgan Library 46 

New Municipal Building of the City of New 
York 48 

Court of Honor, World’s Fair, Chicago 52 

Agricultural Building, World’s Fair, Chicago 56 

L’Enfant’s Plan of Washington 62 

Perspective View of the Commission’s Plan of 

the Mall, Washington 64 

Plan of the Monument Garden, Washington 66 

Monument Terrace looking toward the Capitol 68 
Monument Garden and Terrace looking toward 
the White House 70 

xif 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Bulfinch’s Design for Completion of the Wash- 
ington Monument 72 

Plan of the Pennsylvania Station, New York 76 

Seventh Avenue Fa£ade, Pennsylvania Station 78 

Entrance to Arcade, Pennsylvania Station, from 
Main Waiting-Room 80 

Main Waiting-Room, Pennsylvania Station 82 

The Concourse, Pennsylvania Station 84 

Residence of John Innes Kane, Esq., Fifth Ave- 
nue, New York 108 

Charles Follen McKim. From a Recent Photo- 
graph (Photogravure) 1 1 6 









CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

A STUDY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


CHAPTER I 

FOREWORD 

HE personality of Charles Follen 
McKim was most strongly marked 
by two characteristics which, in him, 
were carried to an extreme point. 
One of these was modesty and a 
shrinking from everything in the nature of publicity 
or praise. It is this characteristic above all others 
which makes it extremely difficult to write anything 
in the nature of a full personal biography. McfCim’s 
work was his life, and to this work he gave his whole 
being without stint of any sort. Through his passion 
for his work and everything connected with it was 
developed what I consider his other most strongly 
marked characteristic, and that was his enthusiasm 
for and interest in the younger men who were coming 
up in his profession, and through whom he felt that 
the traditions which he and his two associates were 
building up, the foundations of which they had so 
splendidly laid, would be carried on. From all parts 



3 



CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

of the country young men came to him for counsel 
and for help, and each went away buoyed up and in- 
spired bywords of genuine sympathy and understand^ 
ing which spurred them on to effort and study and 
eventually, in most cases, to real achievement in archi- 
tecture. 

As an instance of this a personal experience is not 
out of order. I first had the privilege of meeting McKim 
in January, 1888. At that time he was living in Boston, 
giving most of his attention to the Public Library 
Building. I had been for nearly two years studying 
and working in the H. H. Richardson office in Brook- 
line, and called on Mr. McKim with a note of intro- 
duction from an uncle of mine who thought McKim’s 
office would be a better place in which to pursue my 
studies. He received me with his well-known cordial- 
ity and gentleness, talking with me for over an hour 
as if he had known me all my life. Later he took the 
trouble to indicate for me what he considered the best 
course of training in architecture — which was to go 
to Paris for two years, not to enter the Ecole des Beaux 
Arts for a full course, but to get into one of the large 
ateliers (in my case he suggested Pascal) and there to 
work on all the projects given in the school and get 
the criticisms of both patron and students, and then 


4 


FOREWORD 


to spend as much time as possible in traveling, pan* 
ticularly in Italy, carefully studying, measuring, and 
drawing out the great architectural triumphs of the 
older days. So firm was his conviction that this was 
the very best form of training for the practice of archi- 
tecture in America that he never changed his opinion 
even after the custom of sending students to Paris for 
the full course in the Ecole had become so prevalent. 
His further recommendation was two or three years’ 
work in some large American office before venturing 
upon the sea of individual practice. I mention this 
experience because to me it was so surprising to find 
a great architect willing to devote so much time and 
sympathy to one who had no claim upon him what- 
ever, — but that was McKim. 

Another remarkable thing about him was the inter- 
est he always kept up in all the young men who had 
ever come to him. Many times, in after years, I had 
the privilege of meeting him at architectural conven- 
tions and elsewhere, and always was he the same cour- 
teous, distinguished gentleman, full of human sym- 
pathy and understanding. No lover ever served his 
mistress with more tender and entire devotion than 
McKim served Architecture. To him she was em- 
phatically the Mother of the Arts, the fount of crea- 

5 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

tive beauty, and for her embellishment he pressed into 
cooperation with himself all whose work was needed 
for the perfection of any building. Not only were 
painters and sculptors called into service, but he also 
never forgot the great principle that no matter how 
carefully studied may be both plan and design, or how 
beautiful the whole conception, a work of architecture 
is a building built to stand the test of time and the stress 
of actual service, and therefore it is of supreme import 
tance that it be well built. For this purpose only the 
best materials could be considered and used. 

The first architect of note in America, in our gem 
eration, to lay supreme stress upon the importance of 
materials in building construction was H. H. Richard^ 
son. Perhaps it was in Richardson’s office that McKim 
first learned this side of his profession ; at any rate, the 
firm of McKim, Mead, and White carried on and de^ 
veloped this tradition, sparing themselves neither time 
nor expense to insure solid work perfectly carried out. 

A story is told by one of their employees that at the 
time a certain house was being built in New York, 
McKim discovered a slight imperfection in the stone 
of one of the columns supporting the portico. The 
imperfection was so slight that their trained inspector 
had not discovered it and had allowed the contractor 

6 


FOREWORD 


to use this piece of stone. Without blaming either 
superintendent or contractor, McKim quietly ordered 
this entire column removed and a new one cut at the 
expense of the firm. It is a recognized fact that, in 
this instance and many others of a similar character, 
neither the durability of the structure nor the desires 
of their client would have been in any way affected, 
but the taste and knowledge of the architects would 
have been, and for this they could not stand. Because 
of that native modesty to which I have already referred 
it is difficult, even when speaking of executed work, 
to say this was McKim, or this Mead, or that White. 
Never before has there been such a complete unity in 
trinity in human practice as in the work of this firm, 
and the buildings show it. Still, through the interest 
of Mr. Mead, the one surviving partner of the original 
firm, and from various men who have worked upon 
the actual drawings, I hope to be able to point out 
certain buildings and parts of buildings which may 
be said to belong personally to McKim, and through 
them to show in some way how far-reaching and en- 
nobling has been his influence on the practice of archi- 
tecture in America. 


CHAPTER II 


ANCESTRY, TRAINING, AND EARLY WORK 

Charles Follen McKim was born in Isabella Fur- 
nace, Chester County, Pennsylvania, on August 24, 
1 847. To any one interested in noting human char- 
acteristics there is no study more fascinating than the 
effects of heredity and prenatal environment upon 
the achievements and developments of a man's ma- 
ture life. The fact that McKim’s father was a stern 
Abolitionist and political reformer and his mother a 
noted Quaker beauty, a woman of great charm and 
simplicity, undoubtedly accounts for the absolute pu- 
rity, one might almost say severity, of his taste and 
judgment, and also for that determination with which 
he invariably carried his point, once convinced in his 
own mind, against every kind of opposition and often 
against the expressed preferences and wishes of his cli- 
ents. I know of no case, after the work was completed, 
in which his judgment was not vindicated and his 
client thoroughly satisfied. 

Of McKim's childhood and early youth little need 
be said in a book of this character, concerned, chiefly, 

8 



James Miller Me Kim 











* 





































ANCESTRY, TRAINING, EARLY WORK 

in pointing out his influence in his chosen profession 
and the reasons therefor. We know from his letters 
that his childhood’s home was one of moderate means 
where every legitimate economy had to be practiced, 
but we also know that the atmosphere of that house 
was one of rare sweetness and brightness. 

Charles McKim’s father, James Miller McKim, 
came of Irish Protestant extraction, his father having 
come to America from the North of Ireland in 1 774. 
He was educated for the ministry of the Presbyterian 
Church, but almost immediately after his marriage he 
became so interested in the cause of Abolition that he 
withdrew from the ministry, and until the emancipa- 
tion of the negroes was wholly given up to the Anti- 
Slavery cause, and was for years the resident publish- 
ing agent of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. 
In 1 840 he married Sarah Allibone Speakman, who, 
although a Quakeress, was in thorough sympathy 
with his cause. They made their home in Philadel- 
phia until 1866, and here, amid the constant excite- 
ment of the times and the multiplication of fugitive 
slave cases, they found all-absorbing work for the cause 
of Abolition. Their circle of friends was necessarily 
limited because of the strong sympathy for the South 
which existed in Philadelphia, but near them was the 


9 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

Quaker home of James and Lucretia Mott, around 
which gathered a choice little circle of men and wo- 
men ostracized by polite society, but amply sufficient 
among themselves for all the requirements of duty and 
the pleasure of human intercourse. 

Mrs. McKim, Sarah Speakman, was one of the 
remarkable women of her day. All of the portraits of 
her show that she was possessed of great beauty. Her 
parents belonged to the Societyof Friends, and she was 
brought up in the strictest tenets of that order, but not 
even the doctrines of the Quakers could stifle her bril- 
liant wit and her bubbling sense of humor. In Phila- 
delphia, and later when the family had located in 
Llewellyn Park, Orange, New Jersey, she drew around 
her men and women of cultivation and character who 
delighted in the society of this brilliant, beautiful 
woman. 

It was in such an atmosphere that Charles McKim 
grew up, and undoubtedly from his mother he derived 
many of those qualities which made him so charming 
to all who knew him in later life. He received his 
early education at the school of Mr. Theodore D. 
Weld, Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, New Jersey, which 
had been chosen by his father because of Mr. Weld’s 
strong sympathy with the Anti-Slavery cause. In the 


Sarah Allibone McKim 


d :d in 

■ 









ANCESTRY, TRAINING, EARLY WORK 

summer of 1866 he went to Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts, to find a tutor to coach him in mathematics and 
chemistry so that he might enter the Lawrence Scien- 
tific School in the Mining Department. At that time 
the idea of becoming an architect had apparently 
never occurred to him, and his whole mind was bent 
upon becoming a mining engineer. His letters home 
during that summer are stamped, as to the end his 
letters were, with evidences of Quaker discipline and 
training, simple, quiet, and self-restrained, yet brimful 
of affection and reverence for those he loved, bubbling 
over with humor, but showing always through them 
all an earnest desire not to be a burden or tax upon the 
family purse. 

McKinfis plan at this time seems to have been to 
spend one year in the Lawrence Scientific School and 
then two years at the School of Mines in Paris, where 
he felt the training would be better and the expenses 
of living less; but after coming home from Cambridge 
he was led to change his ideas, probably through the 
influence of Mr. Russell Sturgis with whom he had 
become acquainted, and in whose office he worked for 
a few months, and had thus discovered his natural 
leaning towards architecture. 

In the autumn of 1867 he went to Paris and en- 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

tered the atelier of M. Daumet at the Ecole des Beaux 
Arts, where he spent three years pursuing the course 
of study which in after years he always recommended 
to those aspirants in architecture who came to him for 
advice. During this time he traveled quite extensively 
in France, feasting eyes and mind and soul on beam 
tiful buildings, and in 1869 visited England and be^ 
came deeply interested in the Georgian work from 
which our Colonial style sprang. 

To the younger men, who only knew him after he 
had fully arrived, as the French so happily express it, 
it would have been a rare treat to have met him in the 
days immediately following his return from his first 
European studies. I purposely use this adjective “first,” 
because with McKim every trip to Europe was a 
period of hard study and great mental refreshment. 
He always believed in and talked of the inspiration of 
Italy, and one can imagine him in those younger days 
filled with the enthusiasm of youth, slender, graceful, 
and distinguished in appearance, always quiet in his 
mode of expression, but his whole personality alight 
with that passion for beauty, beauty in form, beauty 
in color, and beauty in execution which, in him, never 
died down. 

McKim returned to America in 1870, and almost 


ANCESTRY, TRAINING, EARLY WORK 

immediately entered the office of the firm of Gambnll 
and Richardson in New York. At that time the vivid 
personality of H.H. Richardson was just beginning to 
be felt. America was awakening to the fact that ar- 
chitecture meant something more than miles of nar- 
row brown-stone fronts approached by perilously high 
stoops,or Victorian Gothic Churches without a vestige 
of the Gothic spirit. Richardson and Hunt were the 
dominant men in the profession and both were gradu- 
ates, diplomes, of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Richard- 
son had also had some years of actual professional work 
in a Paris office when the Civil War so affected the 
finances of his family in Louisiana that he was thrown 
upon his own resources in a foreign country. 

McKim never forgot his indebtedness to Richard- 
son, although he departed so far from the Roman- 
esque style which Richardson had introduced and 
which he alone handled with any distinguished suc- 
cess. It is interesting to know that McKim worked 
upon the winning design for Trinity Church which 
took Richardson from New York and led to his estab- 
lishing himself in Boston. Copley Square owes its dis- 
tinction to the two great monuments, Trinity Church 
and the Public Library, which there face each other, 
let us hope forcenturies to come. These two supremely 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

beautiful buildings make far plainer than can any 
written words the peculiar genius of the two greatest 
architects that America has thus far produced and show 
how far the pupil departed from the tenets of his mas' 
ter. Of the Public Library I shall have much more to 
say, but Boston is indeed fortunate to possess both 
these buildings and to have them erected just as they 
are, for in no other spot in America can the develop' 
ment of the architectural mind be so perfectly stud' 
ied. 

Richardson was a poet of a Southern clime, rich, 
exuberant, and endowed with the superabundant vitaL 
ity of the Middle Ages. McKim was a poet, too, but 
of a later day, when men were alive to the power of 
reason and awakened by the renaissance to the potency 
and charm of order and simplicity. To the preserva^ 
tion of this charm of order and simplicity he gave his 
life. He early seems to have realized that in America, 
just recovered from a bloody civil war and only begin' 
ning to be acquainted with her countless resources, the 
conditions were somewhat similar to those in Europe 
during and after the Reformation. A really new peo' 
pie were eager to grapple with the tremendous prob' 
lem of national expansion upon the most impressive 
scale that the world has ever seen. New cities were 


14 


ANCESTRY, TRAINING, EARLY WORK 

to be founded and those already founded were to be re- 
built so as to express this great expansion, and for this 
purpose Art, and especially Architecture, were to be 
called upon to contribute as never before in America 
had they had an opportunity to do. 

The conditions which confronted Sir Christopher 
Wrenn, when, after the great fire, he was called upon 
to plan the rebuilding of London, were in many ways 
similartothosewhich faced the young firm of McKim, 
Mead, and Wfiite at the beginning of their practice, 
and of them the inscription carved over the doorway 
of St. Paul's, “ If you would seek his monument, look 
around you,” can be aptly quoted; for truly they began 
the transformation of New York from a very ugly 
and commonplace town to the brilliant city of to-day, 
and the traditions which they started, orderliness, dig- 
nity, and beauty, have been and are being ably carried 
on by the men who have worked beside them. 

McKimworked in the office of Gambrill and Rich- 
ardson until 1872. When he left there he had secured 
some work of his own to do and for this purpose had 
opened a little office. Previous to this he had become 
acquainted with William R. Mead, who had had some 
architectural experience in the office of Russell Stur- 
gis. In 1872, McKim invited Mead to join forces and 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

help him on the work at hand, and a firm entitled 
McKim, Mead, and Bigelow was formed, which firm 
continued in existence until the withdrawal of Mr. 
Bigelow in 1877. 

At this time Stanford White was working in the 
Richardson office, and had already shown evidencesof 
that brilliancy of design which distinguished his entire 
career. The three men had discovered that sympathy 
in taste and ideas which made their future work 
so brilliant and so consistent, and in 1879 Stanford 
White was invited to come in with them, and thus 
was born the firm of McKim, Mead, and White. 
That this combination was an ideal one and that con- 
ditions in New York were ready to receive the output 
of such a combination of talent was evidenced by their 
almost instant success. These three men kept before 
them the high standard of their calling, and, living up 
to this standard in the midst of modern business condi- 
tions, that their business steadily increased until the 
volume of their work became stupendous and their 
clientele nation-wide, makes their success more re- 
markable and almost unique. I have said before that 
they worked together in such close harmony that in 
most cases it is impossible to differentiate the work of 
any one of the three, but until his death the spirit of 

1 6 


ANCESTRY, TRAINING, EARLY WORK 

McKim was the spirit of the firm, and his confreres 
gladly accorded to him the position of leader. 

As in all cases of architectural practice, most of 
their early work was residential in character, and in 
this type of work and in their earlier commercial 
buildings one can see traces of that romantic spirit 
which so dominated the work of H. H. Richardson. 
It is not my intention to take up the study of individ- 
ual buildings of this period of their career, nor do I at 
all agree with Mr. Russell Sturgis who has said, “ The 
picturesque side is the best side, after all, of the work 
of Messrs. McKim, Mead, and White/' In designing 
country houses or such buildings as the Casinos at New- 
port and Narragansett Pier, which stand on open lawns 
among great trees or near the sea, the natural tendency 
is towards the broken outline and variety of plan. 

Much of this work is charming and all of it distin- 
guished, but it was not until they began more serious 
and important undertakings that the peculiar genius 
of Charles McKim began to be felt, and it was the 
study of these larger problems which led to the choice 
of what is recognized as the “Renaissance of McKim, 
Mead, and WLite." In their interpretation of the Re- 
naissance and their adaptation of its forms to modern 
conditions lies the secret of their professional success. 


!7 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

McKim seems to have been the first man in his pro-' 
fession to recognize the peculiar analogy between the 
conditions in Europe at the time of the Renaissance 
and the conditions in this country immediately after 
the Civil War. Both periods were times of awakening, 
— transitional periods when the people at large were 
realizing the extent and power of their material pros' 
perity ; and in the midst of all this potential activity to 
this firm came first the vision of a civilization equaling 
and even surpassing the civilization and prosperity of 
ancient and imperial Rome. 

All around them was architectural chaos. Richard' 
son had not succeeded in implanting his rich, beautiful, 
and romantic Romanesque style upon this soil because 
it could not take root. WEat his style became in the 
hands of his followers we all know. There was no real 
place in a nation expanding by leaps and bounds, and 
demanding light and air and sunshine, in which to ex^ 
pand still more, for an architecture which called for the 
silence and shadows of medievalism. McKim saw in 
his dreams a civilization of law and order, cities rich, 
spacious, and necessarily conventional. He quickly 
grasped the adaptability of the architecture of Rome, 
Florence, and Tuscany, as well as the Louis XIV pe^ 
nod of France, to the needs of America and devoted 

1 8 


ANCESTRY, TRAINING, EARLY WORK 

himself to the study of these styles, and what I have 
called the “ Renaissance of McKim, Mead, and White" 
is a wonderful adaptation of the styles of these periods 
to the needs of twentieth-century America. 

Many critics, who have failed absolutely to dis- 
cover the spirit animating the work of this firm, have 
called them archaeologists, and accused them of merely 
transplanting to our soil certain well-known and 
admired European buildings. Never was criticism 
more ignorant or unjust. To cite one example, the 
Tower of Madison Square Garden, which even so 
intelligent a critic as Russell Sturgis has called a copy 
of the Giralda at Seville : — excepting the fact that 
both towers are square, that the top story of each mam 
tower consists of a loggia with five bays to each side, 
the central bay in each case being arched, and that 
there is a similarity in the outline and in the number 
of stories in the structure of each, the two towers are 
totally dissimilar in color, in material, in proportion, 
and in detail, and in my judgment the New York 
tower is much the more beautiful. 

McKim has at times been called impractical be- 
cause of his passion for beauty, but now, thanks to 
him and men of his vision, the American people are 
awakening to the fact of the material advantage of 

1 9 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

beauty as realized in financial returns upon invest' 
ments, so that the battle for architecture is more than 
halEwon, and for this we must reverently salute Rich' 
ardson, Hunt, and McKim, for they blazed the trail. 

That McKim would never sacrifice his ideal for the 
purpose of securing a job is nowhere better shown than 
in his action in connection with the competition for 
the New York Public Library. The fundamental con' 
ditions of the plan had been most carefully prepared 
by the trustees of the library in consultation with 1 u 
brary experts. Naturally their responsibility to the city 
which they were pledged to serve made it essential that 
the proposed building should embody within itself 
every known device and expedient for perfect effi' 
ciency and economical administration. The great lb 
brary in Boston had been only recently completed and 
had been found faulty in many administrative details. 
It was expressly for the purpose of avoiding any such 
mistakes in the New Y ork building that the conditions 
of the competition had been made so rigid. To Me' 
Kim these conditions were exceedingly hampering. 
His mind was so occupied at the time with the vision 
of a building of extreme exterior and interior beauty, 
occupying the most conspicuous site on the most itm 
portant avenue in the city he so supremely loved, that 


20 


ANCESTRY, TRAINING, EARLY WORK 

he refused to accept the conditions as outlined and he 
was excluded from the final competition. This was 
naturally a great disappointment to such a man as 
McKim, but he could never be persuaded to sacrifice 
his ideals; however, in spite of his disappointment he 
never ceased giving himself whole-heartedly to every- 
thing that made for the civic betterment of the city of 
New York. 


CHAPTER III 


THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 

The first great building embodying all the principal 
qualities of the style with which the work of McKim, 
Mead, and White will be forever identified is the Bos- 
ton Public Library. Scarcely any other public building 
except the capitol at Washington is so widely known 
by the great mass of the American people, or has been 
so extravagantly praised, on the one hand, or so mer- 
cilessly criticized on the other, as the great palace of 
books on Copley Square. In 1880 the Board of Trus- 
tees of the Boston Public Library decided that the 
building on Boylston Street which had been occupied 
since 1838 was no longer in any way adequate. To en- 
large it to any extent was impossible, and because of 
its crowded situation, the danger from fire was con- 
stant. The granting by the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts of a large portion of the present site for the 
purpose of a library building stimulated the uptown 
movement and the planning of the new structure 
began. 

Many tentative plans of many architects were con- 



BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY FROM COPLEY SQUARE 















THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 

sidered, and it was not until 1887 that a decision was 
reached and the work entrusted to McKim, Mead, and 
White, of New York, with the understanding that an 
office should be maintained in Boston during the pe- 
riod of construction and that one member of the firm 
should be in actual charge of the work. This task was 
undertaken by McKim, and to it he gave all of his 
enthusiasm and his passion for the beautiful, embody- 
ing in the study all the knowledge he had gained from 
direct personal inspection of the great libraries of Eu- 
rope. Just here seems to be the time to settle the oft-re- 
peated criticism that the exterior of the Boston Public 
Library is nothing but a copy of the Librairie Sainte- 
Genevieve at Paris. Russell Sturgis has said, “The 
Boston building has a somewhat greater massiveness 
of effect, thicker walls to all appearances, more reveal 
to the large windows, but otherwise it is not changed 
from the Paris building more than a draughtsman 
with a piece of tracing-paper would naturally change 
his original, expanding here, crowding a little there, 
adding or subtracting a few details/' Fortunate Mr. 
Sturgis, to have had in his employ such draughts- 
men! 

In thinking over the best European prototypes for 
the problem which he had to solve, McKim, with that 


23 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

unerring taste which never seemed to fail him, selected 
Sainte-Genevieve as being the best type of building 
for an open situation like Copley Square, an arcaded 
building with a high basement. Both of the buildings 
under discussion are that, but beyond that their simp 
larity ceases to be much more than that similarity 
which exists between two members of the human race 
of the same sex and nationality. 

The mam facade of the Paris building consists of 
nineteen arches separated by very slender piers, stand- 
ing upon a high basement story, which in turn rests 
directly on the ground. Considerably over half of the 
arcade openings is filled up with masonry. The crown- 
ing member of the basement story, from which the 
arcade rises, has a very slight projection and is richly 
ornamented with a band of festoons. Above the arcade 
is a richly carved frieze and shallow cornice crowned 
with a low stone parapet, behind which rises the roof. 
The basement story is pierced by a series of round- 
arched openings centered on the arcade above. The 
center opening is one round-arched door with heavy 
reveals; these are the salient features of the design of 
the Librairie Sainte-Genevieve. 

To simplify the comparison let us consider the main 
facade of the Boston Library in the same terms. In the 


24 


•5ER.VIC 



PLAN OF GROUND FLOOR, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 

















PLAN OF READING-ROOM FLOOR, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 





THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 

Boston building the main story is an arcade of thirteen 
arches separated by quite heavy piers. Just about one 
third of the height of the arcade is filled with masonry. 
The windows above are much higher than in Sainte- 
Genevieve with deeper reveals. The frieze above the 
arcade is plain except for an inscription in Roman let- 
ters, and the cornice, almost the most beautiful feature 
of the design, is of Italian rather than French propor- 
tion, of considerable projection, and surmounted by a 
very rich copper cresting. The basement story is much 
more lofty than in the Paris building and is pierced 
by square-headed openings. The entrance consists of 
three lofty arches of very deep reveal filled in with 
elaborate wrought iron grilles. The whole building 
stands upon a granite platform raised six steps above 
the level of the square. From this brief description it 
must be readily seen that the designs are unlike in 
every salient proportion. 

The Boston Library being the first great monu- 
mental work of McKim, Mead, and White, and being 
peculiarly Mr. McKim’s own child, merits a much 
more lengthy description, especially as its influence 
upon the future work of the firm is still felt. To the 
completion of this building were called painters and 
sculptors, that the result might be the more perfect. 

2 5 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

Among all the wonderful achievements of Augustus 
Saint-Gaudens it is hard to find anything more charms 
ing than the three sculptured panels over the entrance 
arches, illustrating the seals of the Library, the City, 
and the Commonwealth. The medallions cut in the 
spandrels of the great window arches and representing 
trademarks or devices of the early printers and book" 
binders, mostly of the sixteenth century, are the work 
of Mr. Domingo Mora, who did his work directly 
from the originals as he found them in books. The 
great couchant lions on the main stairway are the work 
of Louis Saint'Gaudens, a brother of Augustus. In 
mural paintings the building is exceptionally rich, pos" 
sessing the Sargent and Abbey series, so well known 
and illustrated, and in one sense it is unique in being 
the only building in America decorated in any part by 
Puvis de Chavannes. 

But it is not my intention to go into a detailed de^ 
scription of the treasures of the building, all of which 
have been the subject of many published articles. 
Within and without,none but the best of materials has 
been used in the construction and adornment of the 
building, and in each case the material was chosen by 
McKim, after most careful consideration, as being in 
his judgment the only thing to use. The accompany^ 

26 



MAIN ENTRANCE, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 





THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 

ing illustrations and plans give a much better idea than 
can any written words. 

The plan of the building is interesting as showing 
the directness and general simplicity of arrangement. 
Were it being worked out to-day with the knowledge 
of more modern library methods, undoubtedly the 
whole rear of the building along Blagden Street would 
be given up to the library stacks, as is done in the new 
library in New York; but in the eighties it seemed 
better to devote the fine light along Boylston Street to 
such departments as the reading-rooms for children, 
the periodical room, the assembly hall, and the patent 
library, placing the stacks around the opposite corner. 
As far as I can find out, from talks with a former head 
of the Boston Library and from conversations with 
administrators of other large libraries, this is the main 
fault in the building. In all other respects the plan is 
economical and straightforward with ample circula- 
tion. The central courtyard is a feature of great beauty 
and usefulness. One day last August I strolled into the 
library, as I always do when I have a leisure hour in 
Boston, and nothing, even in Italy, could have been 
more charming than this court with the fountain play- 
ing in the center and many readers seated in comfort- 
able chairs in the arcade. It was a veritable out-of-doors 


27 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

room pervaded with the stillness and coolness so con- 
ducive to study and meditation and completely re- 
moved from the heat and noise of the streets. Such a 
spot on such a day is the strongest possible indorsement 
of the court feature of the plan. 

To one studying the life of Charles McKim this 
building is supremely important as being his launching 
upon the great style to the following of which he and 
his two confreres have given their lives since 1887. 
The science of library management, and I think it can 
be called a science, has developed in many channels, 
and according to the most modern lights the Boston 
Library has inconveniences ; but in spite of these it 
stands to-day the most serenely beautiful of Ameri- 
can library buildings and an expression of the highest 
architectural ideals according to McKim, Mead, and 
White. And right here I would attempt to describe 
more fully those ideals as I understand them. At the 
very outset of the firm's career, Messrs. McKim, Mead, 
and WTite recognized that the only architectural tra- 
dition to which America could lay any claim was that 
transplanted form of Georgian which we call Colonial 
and which in itself is an adaptation of Renaissance 
forms. This of itself was enough to incline a man of 
McKim’s temperament to a closer study of this style. 

28 



MAIN STAIRCASE, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 








BATES HALL, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 









THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 

In judging his work one must also remember that he 
came of conservative cultivated Philadelphia ancestry 
and had been brought up to observe and cling to the 
forms and traditions of an established society. While 
recognizing the inherent beauty of Gothic forms, in the 
use of which he made one very successful essay in the 
Morristown Church, he early realized that this style 
was not sufficiently elastic for a new and expanding 
civilization full of the enthusiasm and boastfulness of 
youth. Throughout his whole career his ideal seems 
to have been to establish a tradition capable of contin- 
uous development rather than to attempt anything 
daringly original, to produce buildings which should 
compel the observation and admiration of the passer- 
by by their quiet yet sufficiently assertive beauty. One 
cannot but see the wisdom of such a course in such a 
country as ours. That this wisdom was quickly recog- 
nized by the public is shown in the volume of work in- 
trusted to McKim, Mead, and White, and it is also 
more fully shown in the steadily increasing admiration 
of their confreres and followers. Their office became 
an atelier in the truest sense of the word and from it 
have come many of the best-trained and most success- 
ful architects in America. In all of this work McKim’s 
was the guiding spirit and inspiration, and to his final 


29 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

judgment not only his partners but also all of his 
many pupils and assistants readily deferred. 

Because the firm consistently worked in the forms 
of an established European style, they have been ac^ 
cused of lack of originality and also of sacrificing 
many things for the purpose of producing a certain 
exterior effect. As time goes on the injustice of such 
criticism will be more and more proven. Not only in 
New York, but in other large cities of the country do 
the buildings of McKim, Mead, and White stand out 
from the surrounding mass, not because of the pos^ 
session of any striking qualities, but because of that 
air of distinguished breeding which pervades them all. 
Such distinction can only be produced by the consist^ 
ent sacrifice of individual preference to the higher good 
of the profession as a whole. Richardson was unques^ 
tionably a more brilliant genius than McKim, but he 
worked in a style adapted peculiarly to his own term 
perament, and, as he left no abiding architectural prim 
ciples for future generations, his style quickly died 
out. Nobody questions the supreme genius of Shaken 
speare in the field of dramatic literature, but he never 
did for the English Language what Racine and Cor^ 
neille did for the French, in establishing a form and 
tradition in dramatic literature for his successors to 


3 ° 



COURTYARD, BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 







THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY 

follow and further develop. This is just what MeKim 
did for American architecture. He recognized that 
under certain conditions the forms of the Renaissance 
were capable of almost infinite expansion, and after 
the completion of the Boston Library, MeKim, Mead, 
and White practically abandoned those picturesque 
forms in which they had hitherto worked, and even 
in their residences and churches clung steadily to pro- 
portion, simplicity, and where possible, to a conserva- 
tive richness of detail and ornament, to attain the dis- 
tinction which they desired. No building designed by 
them combines these qualities more successfully than 
the Boston Public Library, but I aim to show the 
elasticity of their style in brief descriptions and illus- 
trations of various other buildings. 


CHAPTER IV 


DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 

It is not my intention here to enter into a detailed 
criticism of McKim’s executed work, but there are a 
few among the many buildings designed and executed 
by the firm to which I wish to call attention because 
they illustrate so perfectly the principles for which 
McKim so persistently strove. It is not possible to 
maintain that these buildings are exclusively the work 
of McKim ; in fact, with some of them, he had no 
immediate connection, but, as has been said, until his 
death his spirit and influence were predominant in the 
office and set the standard of taste to which ail com 
formed. Their clubhouses in New York, the Century 
on West Forty-third Street; the Harvard, on West 
Forty-fourth Street ; and the Metropolitan and Uni- 
versity, both on Fifth Avenue, have established a style 
for all large city clubs. 

Of these the Century is the oldest, and while it is 
almost wholly the work of Stanford WTite, I men- 
tion it in this discussion because it is so striking an 
example of those principles of architectural design 

32 





EXTERIOR OF THE HARVARD CLUB, NEW YORK 






EXTERIOR OF THE CENTURY CLUB, NEW YORK 












DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 

which need to be implanted in the minds of students 
of American architecture. It is a simple balanced 
facade of stone and brick and terra-cotta. This was 

. j 

one of the first buildings in the United States in which 
the long, thin “Roman” brick was used, and because 
of its successful handling in this building for many 
years this shaped brick became a fashion, until it was 
superseded by the so-called “ Harvard ” brick, the re- 
vival of which is also due to McKim, Mead, and 
White. The facade of the Century Club deserves 
constant study for young architects who sincerely wish 
to master the fundamental principles of proportion, 
composition, and suitability. In this design there is no 
superfluous ornament. Every detail counts, and the 
omission of any one would materially injure the archi- 
tectural composition. That all the enrichment is con- 
fined to the terra-cotta surfaces is worthy of attention. 
This material is never satisfactory when used in plain 
surfaces, as in the burning it almost invariably buckles 
and becomes uneven. In the Century Club the terra- 
cotta is either fluted, as in the pilasters, or richly 
moulded, as in capitals and friezes and the garlands 
which fill up the spandrels of the loggia arch, thus 
focalizing the eye upon what was intended to be the 
mam feature of the design. The high basement ex- 


33 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

presses at once the fact that this floor is given up to 
rooms of secondary character and yet of sufficient im- 
portance to demand light and air, and at the same time 
it is a most forceful factor in the beauty of the whole 
composition, as it lifts the charmingly proportioned 
loggia and the windows of the great rooms of the first 
story just the right height above the street. These 
things in a design do not happen, but are only achieved 
by careful study combined with faultless taste. To 
cultivate such a taste and make it a part of one's nature 
is surely the soul’s desire of every young architect who 
loves his art, and such taste can be acquired in America 
by no surer means than the careful study of the work 
of Charles McKim and his associates. 

One of the club buildings erected by the firm in 
which McKim took peculiar delight and which with 
him was a veritable love-child is the New York Har- 
vard Club on West Forty-fourth Street. I can think 
of no more exquisite example of Georgian architec- 
ture in America than the Forty-fourth Street facade 
of this building. It is the sort of thing that no one can 
appreciate at first sight, but it grows more beautiful 
with each year and is an object of constant delight 
to all who love those principles of design which have 
made our own Colonial architecture so delightful. In 


34 



DINING-HALL, HARVARD CLUB, NEW YORK 
















JOHNSTON GATES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 










DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 

no sense a copy of any previous building in England 
or America, it is in perfect harmony with the early 
buildings in the Harvard Y ard and yet belongs wholly 
to our modern day and shows the possibilities of de- 
velopment in this our early traditional style. The 
great dining-room in the Harvard Club is to my mind 
the most beautiful public dining-hall in New York, 
and in its dignity and simplicity puts to shame the 
more gorgeous dining-rooms of a later date. 

Although he was only at Cambridge one year, Mc- 
Kim was always at heart a Harvard man, and that 
the University recognized and appreciated that fact is 
shown in the degrees she conferred upon him and the 
manner in which, until his death, she called for his 
judgment in all questions where architectural taste 
was needed. He built much for Harvard ; conspicuous 
among the College buildings being the Harvard Union 
and the building for the Department of Architecture ; 
but the thing which gives unity and scale as well as 
beauty to the old Harvard Yard is the series of memo- 
rial gates and the walls and grilles connecting them. 
The most beautiful of these, the Johnston Gate, is il- 
lustrated in this memoir. It was the first and is still 
the most beautiful of the gates and set the style for all 
the others. Of all of his many services to Harvard, 


35 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

I think these gates and the clubhouse in New York 
are dearest to the hearts of Harvard men and in their 
judgment show most distinctly the genius of Charles 
McKim. 

It is interesting to note that these Johnston Gates 
really caused the revival of the usage of the so-called 
“ Harvard ” brick which has since become so general. 
It was McKim's desire to match as nearly as possible 
the old brickwork in Harvard Hall and the other early 
buildings in the Y ard. For this purpose many experi- 
ments were made at the brick-kilns and finally the gates 
were built out of the rejected, over-burned bricks which 
had been thrown aside by the brickmakers as not being 
worthy of use. So quickly was their beauty of color and 
texture recognized by the discriminating public that 
the practice of over-burning a certain percentage of the 
bricks in the kilns for the purpose of producing the 
black headers became general in many brick-kilns. 

There is another building which a noted English 
architect coming from London, the city of famous 
clubs, pronounced the most beautiful club building in 
the world. I am now speaking of the University Club 
on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fourth Street, New York. 
This sounds like extravagant praise, but the more one 
studies this building the less is one inclined to disagree 

3 6 



EXTERIOR OF THE UNIVERSITY CLUB, NEW YORK 






THE GREAT HALL, UNIVERSITY CLUB 









MAIN DINING-ROOM, UNIVERSITY CLUB 






DETAIL OF THE UNIVERSITY CLUB LIBRARY 
























DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 

with this criticism. Here we have McKim, and Mc- 
Kim at his best. Through the courtesy of the firm I 
am able to publish so many photographs that I will let 
them speak for themselves. This building possesses all 
the qualities desirable in a palace upon a great city 
street, and to-day the modern city club can be nothing 
but a palace if it is to fulfill the demands made upon it. 
Since the widening of Fifth Avenue has necessitated 
the removal of the area balustrade, the building stands 
solidly upon its own base, and from base to top of cor- 
nice is an example of perfect proportion, perfect com- 
position, and perfect suitability. The plan is quite as 
simple as the elevation and the elevation well expresses 
the plan. Would that we had more such buildings in 
America. 

It was the good fortune of McKim, Mead, and 
White to be chosen to design many “ palaces,” as we 
use the word in these United States. The group of 
houses on Madison Avenue known as the Villard 
house, but in reality four separate residences, is another 
example in the same manner as the University Club 
and hardly less successful. 

While this is primarily a sketch of the work of 
Charles McKim, because of the strong inter-relations 
of the members of the firm one is compelled, in at- 


37 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

tempting to describe their work, at least to touch upon 
the work of the other two men; and there is one strictly 
commercial building to which I cannot resist alluding 
because of its great beauty as well as its perfect adapt- 
ability to the purpose for which it was built. I refer to 
the Gorham Building at the corner of Fifth Avenue 
andTwenty-sixth Street which was designed by Stan- 
ford White. Here is a building built for a retail jew- 
elry store, demanding great show windows and all the 
other requirements of commerce, but here we have a 
work of art and perhaps the most beautiful store build- 
ing in America. That McKim had nothing to do with 
the design himself I have said, but here are the princi- 
ples for which he stood carried out with the utmost 
perfection of taste and here is a type of design adapted 
to almost any commercial purpose. Critics for years 
have praised the Rue de Rivoli in Paris as an example 
of street architecture. If Fifth Avenue, from Madison 
Square to Fortieth Street, were carried out in a contin- 
uation of this design, what a street America would pos- 
sess. Let us hope that some new Western city, ambi- 
tious in city planning, may see the possibilities of this 
design and build just one street of this type. It would 
create an architectural revolution. 

The buildings thus far referred to are distinctly Re- 

38 



THE GORHAM BUILDING. NEW YORK 







EXTERIOR OF THE VILLARD HOUSES, NEW YORK 



DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 

naissance in feeling, rather than Roman, but as the 
work of the firm grew more strongly established in the 
minds of the American people, as representing the ideal 
towards which American architecture was pushing, 
they received commissions of a much larger scale and 
among them three great universities. Of these, Co- 
lumbia and the University of New York were entirely 
new plants located in what was then open country, 
while the commission lor the University of Virginia 
was necessitated because of a disastrous fire. As an in- 
stance of how dangerous, and often silly, it is for one 
to judge any work of art before the whole conception 
is completed and the observer able to understand what 
was in the mind of the creator, I am constantly re- 
minded of my first impressions of Columbia Univer- 
sity. I first saw these buildings just after the comple- 
tion of the first group, and my disappointment was so 
great I could have wept. I had been told that Colum- 
bia was peculiarly the work of McKim, and with my 
mind’s eye filled with memories of Padua and Bolo- 
gna, I expected — I do not know quite what. With 
the exception of the library, everything seemed cold 
and barrack-like. The library alone — calm, serene, 
majestic — satisfied even from the beginning. I went 
again and again because I could not reconcile my dis- 

39 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


appointment with my intense admiration for and be- 
lief in the genius of McKim. Slowly I began to under- 
stand the bigness of the conception. This was not 
Columbia College moved uptown, but the beginning 
of a great University which was to grow and expand 
with the growth of the city until it became the crown 
jewel of the metropolis of the Western World. Each 
year new buildings have been added. With each addi- 
tion one gams a clearer conception of the whole idea 
as conceived by its designer. To-day what I called 
barracks are so no longer ; not because they have been 
changed, but because, with the erection of other build- 
ings^hey take their proper places in the composition of 
which the library is and always must be the keynote. 
How Columbia University regarded McKim's work 
was so beautifully expressed by President Nicholas 
Murray Butler in his remarks at the Memorial Service 
held at the New Theater in New York on Novem- 
ber 23, 1 909, that I copy them in full: — 

Mr. McKim belonged to our University in a peculiarly inti- 
mate and personal sense. In his going we mourn the death of a 
great artist and a noble citizen, but we add to that a deep sense 
of personal bereavement and loss at the passing of a dear colleague 
and friend. From the day when, thirty years ago, the study of 
architecture was first systematically begun with us, it had his in- 
terest, his guiding counsel, his generous and consistent support, 


40 



THE LIBRARY OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 







DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 


and when the time came for the University to enter upon the 
construction of its new and permanent home, the task of making 
it was his. His mind seized the underlying principle and concept 
tion of a great home and school for scholars in the metropolis of 
a modern democracy as no mind had ever done before. McKim 
knew that under those conditions he could not plan and build 
something remote, detached, suburban ; he knew that he must 
plunge his institutional home into the city’s life, that his scholars 
might be part of the city. He knew that it must have an eiv 
trance broad and spacious and free as the invitation which it oh 
fered to every one who would drink at its fountain. He knew 
that it must not turn its hack or its side to the great population ; 
but that it must look it straight in the face and tell its own story. 
He knew that the University of the twentieth century must own 
its dependence upon the world’s learning and the world’s lore by 
building itself about a great library which represented the accw 
mulated scholarship of the ages that have gone. All these things 
McKim saw ; all these things McKim and those associated with 
him did. It was a great service, not alone to the University, but 
to our democracy. We like to think of him as a member of the 
great tradition, the one great tradition that has shaped the inteb 
lectual life and the esthetic aspiration of the Western World ; the 
great tradition which, despite all changing, fitful tempers, all ah 
terationsof scene and passings of time, remains the one pure well 
of art and literature undefiled, the tradition which bears the name 
of Greece. 

The spirit of sacrifice of individual preference for 
the greater benefit of preserving architectural tradition 
is shown in the restoration of the White House 
in Washington and the turning of the old Custom 


41 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

House in New York into a building for the National 
City Bank and the rebuilding of the Bank of Mon- 
treal. The enlarging of the White House is one of 
the things for which the American people should for- 
ever be most grateful to McKim. For many years 
before this commission was entrusted to him, plans for 
this enlargement had been considered. One plan was 
to give up the White House entirely to executive 
offices and build a residence for the President upon 
one of the surrounding hills. Public opinion was so 
strongly opposed to this that the scheme was aban- 
doned, and various designs were made for enlarge 
ing the existing building every one of which would 
have completely destroyed its charm and architectural 

Mr. Roosevelt, who was then President, fully reaL 
ized the beauty and historic associations connected 
with the White House and heartily indorsed the 
scheme which was finally adopted of devoting the 
building exclusively to residence purposes and build- 
ing temporary offices in the White House grounds 
until such a time as Congress should make the neces- 
sary appropriation for an Executive Office Building. 
Mr. McKim at once made exhaustive studies of 
Hoban's original plans and all of these changes were 



42 



THE WHITE HOUSE, SHOWING RESTORED EAST WING 






STATE DINING-ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE 











DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 

made to harmonize with these plans and preserve the 
architectural simplicity for which the White House 
was justly famous. Many alterations had been made 
during different administrations, so that the interior 
was a sort of architectural hodge-podge. All of these 
were removed and the Colonial character and dignity 
of the rooms restored. The structure was made fire- 
proof and supplied with those domestic conveniences 
which it had so sadly lacked. Even the new State 
Dining-Room, where the architect had an opportu- 
nity to do as he pleased, was designed in complete 
harmony with the other rooms, and while very beau- 
tiful and dignified in treatment, is far more simple 
than the dining-rooms of many private houses in 
Washington. To-day the White House can be 
pointed to with justifiable pride by all Americans as 
embodying in itself those democratic ideals of sim- 
plicity and dignity upon which the whole structure of 
our government was reared. To realize this was no 
easy task and the architect was thwarted at every step 
and harshly criticized both in and out of Congress, but 
McKim never gave in against his best ideals and for 
this the people of the United States will always bless 
him. 

Shortly after the completion of the V/hite House 

43 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

the American Institute of Architects, holding their 
thirty-eighth convention, celebrated their fiftieth anni- 
versary with a great banquet at the Arlington Hotel. 
No more distinguished body of men ever met together 
in Washington. The President of the United States, 
members of his Cabinet, ambassadors of foreign gov- 
ernments, dignitaries of the Church, Senators, Repre- 
sentatives, college presidents, painters, sculptors, and 
authors who were the guests of the Institute, were 
seated at a long table raised upon a platform and ex- 
tending around three sides of the room, but among that 
distinguished group McfCim was not to be found. He 
had heard the rumor that he was to be the real guest 
of honor, and with his characteristic modesty had seated 
himself at a small table in a distant part of the room 
among the workers of his own profession. Speeches 
were made by President Roosevelt, Cardinal Gibbons, 
Senator Root, Nicholas Murray Butler, Augustus 
Saint-Gaudens,John La Farge, and others upon many 
varied topics, but each speaker at the end of his ad- 
dress made a point of mentioning McKim's work for 
Washington. One amusing sight at this banquet was 
Speaker Cannon, chewing his long cigar and listening 
to unstinted praise for the remodeled White House 
and the man he had baited in every way in his power 


44 



EXTERIOR OF THE BANK. OF MONTREAL, ST. JAMES STREET 





MAIN BANKING-ROOM, BANK OF MONTREAL 




INTERIOR OF THE NATIONAL CITY BANK, NEW YORK 



DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 

during the whole extent of the work. It was at this 
meeting that McKim was able to announce to the In- 
stitute of Architects what was to him the realization 
of one of his dearest dreams, the ability to purchase 
a permanent home for the American Academy at 
Rome, which was made possible by gifts of one hun- 
dred thousand dollars each from Mr. J. Pierpont Mor- 
gan and Mr. Henry Walters. 

But to return to our muttons. Wffien the National 
City Bank bought the old New York Custom House 
on Wall Street, it was a much discussed question what 
to do with the property. Some favored tearing the 
building down and starting afresh with an entirely new 
structure, others advised the erection of a skyscraper 
upon the old colonnade. McKim opposed both of these 
schemes. He and his partners not only realized the 
beauty of the building as it stood, and felt it would be 
a distinct loss to the street should this monument of 
an earlier day be destroyed, but also felt that a typical 
office building placed on top of the really beautiful 
order would be an anachronism for which they could 
not stand. The building as it stood was entirely too 
small to meet the demands of the bank, and there was 
nothing in the interior worthy of preservation. The 
question, therefore, was how to provide modern bank- 

45 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

ing quarters for a great corporation and at the same 
time preserve the really beautiful exterior. After most 
careful study the solution of a superimposed order, 
more delicate in detail, following an ancient Roman 
precedent, was decided upon. So carefully has this 
been done that, instead of taking away from the beauty 
of the original order, that beauty has been greatly in- 
creased, and the additional height of the second order 
but brings the building more into scale with the sur- 
rounding buildings and makes it to-day the most dis- 
tinguished edifice on Wall Street. When it came to 
designing the great banking-room, the architects had a 
free hand, and our illustrations show far better than 
words can tell what a great success has been achieved. 

In rebuilding the Bank of Montreal the same spirit 
of determination to preserve all that was worthy of 
preservation in the original building was carried out. 
As it was utterly impossible to meet the needs of the 
bank by enlargement of the original building on St. 
James Street, this building, with its beautiful pedi- 
mented portico, was turned into a great vestibule or 
anteroom to the bank and a new building was put upon 
the lot in the rear in every way sufficient for the cor- 
poration’s needs for years to come. The two structures 
are perfectly blended into one, and the Bank of Mon- 

46 



EXTERIOR OF MORGAN LIBRARY, NEW YORK 









VESTIBULE OF THE MORGAN LIBRARY 














INTERIOR OF THE MORGAN LIBRARY 



DISCUSSION OF VARIOUS BUILDINGS 

treal is to-day the admiration of every visitor to the 
Canadian metropolis and the pride and joy of its citi- 
zens. 

One other building I must dwell upon before leaving 
this brief description of some of McKim’s executed 
work, and that is that pure architectural gem, the Mor- 
gan Library, on Thirty-sixth Street, New York. Here 
was an opportunity for every form of lavish expendi- 
ture, for this was the private toy of a multi-millionaire 
who never discussed the price when gratifying his de- 
sires. Again I must appeal to photographs to give any 
really clear idea of the beauty of this exquisite build- 
ing, but even well-taken photographs cannot show the 
color harmonies within and without. In this build- 
ing restraint and discrimination are carried to the nth- 
power. These are the two characteristics which Amer- 
ican architecture most sadly lacks and a careful and 
exhaustive study of the Morgan Library, as a whole 
and in detail, only strengthens the belief that no great 
architecture can exist without them. 

Because during McKim’s lifetime the firm erected 
no skyscraper building, it has often been said that the 
principles which they taught so persistently could not 
be applied to a tall building. One has only to study 
the new Municipal Building of the city of New York 


47 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

now rapidly nearing completion and which is the work 
of McKim, Mead, and White to discover that McKim 
was right, absolutely right, in maintaining that pro- 
portion, dignity, and restraint are the fundamental 
principles of every great art, the foundation stones 
upon which building rests, and that without them no- 
thing truly beautiful can be, and with them any type 
of structure may be, made beautiful. Beauty was the 
demand of McKim’s soul, and that he achieved beauty 
the illustrations which I am able to show and this brief 
description of only a few of his many creations will, 
I hope, prove. 



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NEW MUNICIPAL BUILDING OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK 






CHAPTER V 


THE WORLD’S FAIR AT CHICAGO 

Perhaps no one event in the latter part of the nine-' 
teenth century did so much to awaken the American 
mind to the possibilities in architecture as the Inter" 
national Exhibition held in Paris in 1 889. Since the 
Centennial in Philadelphia in 1876, nothing of this 
nature had been attempted in the United States, and 
yet those intervening years had been years of very 
great material prosperity and expansion, and the aspi" 
rations of the American people had soared away be" 
yond their own somewhat narrow boundaries. The 
Paris Exposition brought these subconscious aspira" 
tions to the light of vigorous day. It was almost time 
to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of 0> 
lumbus's Discovery, and the nation demanded a great 
international exposition which should certainly equal 
if not surpass the one so recently held in Paris. 

Several cities, notably New York and Chicago, 
competed for the honor of housing this proposed ex" 
position. New York was so sure of her own fitness 
as the only possible place that she entirely overlooked 

49 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

and underestimated the zeal and enthusiasm of the 
Western metropolis, and so by Act of Congress this 
fair went to Chicago. It is not my purpose here to 
give even a brief history of the inception and carry-' 
ing out of the Chicago Fair. Its memory is too dis' 
tinct in the minds of all to need any description. At 
the time of its conception the most brilliant genius in 
the architectural world west of the Alleghany Mourn 
tains was John Wellborn Root. He with his partner 
Daniel H. Burnham, under the firm title of Burnham 
and Root, had built up a large practice in Chicago and 
throughout the West and had done more than any 
other men to place the profession of architecture in its 
proper relation with the people, who before their ad' 
vent had looked upon an architect as a rather tricky 
mason or carpenter who by calling himself an archf 
tect hoped to get a little more money out of the pock' 
ets of the community. 

John Root possessed in his nature a rare combi' 
nation of the characteristics of both Richardson and 
McKim. In his executed work his warm Southern 
nature led him to express himself in the Romanesque 
style of Richardson rather than in any adaptation of 
classic forms, and like Richardson he had an intense 
love for rich and glowing color. On the other hand, 

5 ° 


THE WORLD’S FAIR AT CHICAGO 

like McKim he passionately loved music and de- 
manded in his life and in his work proportion, har- 
mony, and order. 

To the firm of Burnham and Root is due primarily 
the location of the Fair in Jackson Park, which up to 
that time had been a barren waste. Various locations 
were considered, notably the Lake Front Park. On 
August 10, 1890, Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, of 
Boston, came to Chicago on the invitation of the 
Buildings and Grounds Committee to consider the 
situation. At first even he was discouraged by the un- 
finished desolation of Jackson Park. On August 20, 
the Committee appointed F. L. Olmsted and Com- 
pany consulting landscape architects, and on the fol- 
lowing day John Root was made consulting architect. 
At Root’s request this appointment was changed so as 
to include his partner, and on September 4, 1890, 
Burnham and Root were made consulting architects 
of the Exposition. 

At this time feeling in Chicago with reference to 
the planning of the grounds and the designing of the 
buildings ran very high. It was the popular idea that 
it was to be a Chicago Fair and that only Chicago 
architects should be employed in its creation. Not so 
for one instant felt John Root. From the very begin- 

5 1 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


ning he took the ground that it was to be a National 
Exposition and should represent the entire nation and 
show to the world the ideals and the achievements of 
the American people. That their position might be 
perfectly understood, Burnham and Root announced 
that they were employed simply in an advisory and 
executive capacity and that they would design none 
of the great buildings around the proposed Court of 
Honor. On December 8, i 890, Root presented to the 
Buildings and Grounds Committee a memorial in 
which he set forth four modes of procedure towards 
the securing of designs for the various buildings and 
his recommendations were as follows: — 

Preliminary work in locating buildings, in determining their 
general areas and in other elementary directions necessary and 
proper, progress in the design and erection of the structures of 
the Columbian Exposition has now reached a point where it 
becomes necessary to determine the method by which designs 
for these buildings may he obtained. We recognize that your 
action in this matter will be of great importance not only in its 
direct effect upon the artistic and commercial successes of the 
Exposition, but scarcely less, upon the aspect represented by 
America to the world and also as a precedent for future pro' 
cedure in this country by the government, by corporations, and 
individuals. 

In our advisory capacity we wish to recommend such action 
to you as will be productive of the best results, and will at the same 

5 2 



COURT OF HONOR, WORLD S FAIR, CHICAGO 













THE WORLD’S FAIR AT CHICAGO 


time be in accord with the expressed sentiments of the architect 
tural societies of America. Whatever suggestions are here made 
relate to the main buildings located in Jackson Park. That these 
buildings should, in the designs, relationship and arrangement, 
be of the highest possible architectural merit is of importance 
scarcely less than the variety, richness and comprehensiveness of 
the various displays within them. Such success is not so much 
dependent upon the expenditure of money as upon the expends 
ture of thought, knowledge and enthusiasm by men known to 
be in every way endowed with these qualities. And the result 
achieved by them will be the measure by which America and 
especially Chicago, must expect to be judged by this world. 

Several methods of procedure suggest themselves: 

First. The selection of one man to whom the designing of 
the entire work should be entrusted. 

Second. Competition made free to the whole architectural 
profession. 

Third. Competition amongst a selected few. 

Fourth. Direct selection. 

The first method would possess some advantage in the logi' 
cal result which would be attained. But the objections are that 
the time for the preparation of designs is so short that no one 
man could hope to do the subject justice even were he broad 
enough to avoid, in work of such varied and colossal character, 
monotonous repetition of ideas. 

The second method has been employed in France and other 
European countries with success and it would probably result in 
the production of a certain number of plans possessing more or 
less merit and novelty. But in such a competition much time, 
even now most valuable, would be wasted, and the result would 
be a mass of irrelevant and almost irreconcilable material which 


53 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


would demand great and extended labor to bring into coherence. 
It is greatly to be feared that from such a heterogeneous com' 
petition the best men of the profession would refrain, not only 
because the uncertainties involved in it are too great and their 
time too valuable, but because the societies to which they almost 
universally belong have so strongly pronounced its futility. 

A limited and paid competition would present fewer embar' 
rassments; but even in this case the question of time is presented, 
and it is most unlikely that any result derived through this means, 
coming, as it would from necessarily partial acquaintance with 
the subject and hasty ilbconsidered presentations of it, could be 
satisfactory. 

Far better than any of these methods seems to be the last. 
This is to select a certain number of architects because of their 
eminence in their profession, choosing each man for such work 
as would be most parallel with his best achievements ; these arch' 
itects to meet in conference, become masters of all the elements 
of the problems to be solved and agree upon some general scheme 
of procedure ; the preliminary studies resulting from this to be 
fully discussed in a subsequent conference, and, with the assist' 
ance of such suggestions as your advisors might make, to be 
brought into an harmonious whole. 

The precise relationship between the directory and these 
architects might be safely left to a general conference at which 
all questions of detail could be agreed upon. The honor thus 
conferred upon any man thus selected would create in his mind 
a disposition to place the artistic quality of his work in advance 
of the mere question of emolument while the emulation begot' 
ten in a rivalry so dignified and friendly could not fail to be pro' 
ductive of a result which would stand before the world as the 
best fruit of American civilization. 


54 


THE WORLD'S FAIR AT CHICAGO 

That this memorial was approved and adopted by 
the Commission was one of the most fortunate things 
for the architectural profession that has happened in 
America. Before presenting it Burnham and Root had 
definitely canvassed the situation in their own minds 
and picked out the men best qualified to carry out the 
work according to the highest ideals of architectural 
practice. Their recommendations were carried out by 
the Committee and Messrs. Richard M. Hunt, Mc- 
Kim, Mead, and White, and George B. Post, of New 
York; Peabody and Stearns, of Boston; and Van 
Brunt and Howe, of Kansas City, were appointed. On 
December 27, Root announced to the Buildings and 
Grounds Committee that these gentlemen would ac- 
cept their appointment, and January 10, 1891, was 
fixed upon as the date for the first general conference. 

The Committee, after having accepted the ground 
plan for the various buildings, wisely left all questions 
of design and detail to the various artists and so the 
great work of planning and constructing the Exposi- 
tion began in a spirit of friendly harmony and emula- 
tion. The members of the Eastern firms came together 
at the time appointed. At first sight of Jackson Park 
they seemed discouraged and fearful that nothing 
really beautiful could be accomplished, but largely 


55 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

through the enthusiasm of Root, and Mr. Codman, of 
the firm of F. L. Olmsted and Company, they became 
fired with the possibilities offered by an almost clean 
field upon which to build, having the blue waters of 
Lake Michigan as a background. 

At this first conference McKim was not present, but 
his firm was more than well represented by Mr. Mead. 
In the midst of this conference, Root was stricken with 
pneumonia and died on January 1 5. At first his loss 
was felt to be irreparable. Up to his death he had been 
the guiding spirit of the whole conception and had hinv 
self prepared the first complete plan for Jackson Park. 
As the consulting architects worked and studied the 
problem on the ground the excellencies of Root’s plan 
became more and more apparent, and in the mam his 
plan was carried out. 

McKim entered into this work with even more than 
his usual enthusiasm. This was the sort of problem in 
which his mind and soul delighted, and in the confer' 
ences between the architects, which became more and 
more frequent as the work progressed, his judgment 
and taste became more and more in demand. It had 
been John Root’s desire that Mr. Hunt, whom he re' 
garded as the dean of the profession, should design the 
Administration Building which was to be the domi' 

56 



AGRICULTURAL BUILDING, WORLD S FAIR, CHICAGO 







THE WORLD’S FAIR AT CHICAGO 

nant building in the proposed scheme. Mr. Hunt’s 
preferences for the classic style being well known, this 
settled the question of styles. Root’s idea had always 
been for a Fair resplendent in color, brilliant, and 
ephemeral as expressing a great passing fair rather 
than a city. To McKim’s taste and influence more 
than to any other one among the already famous 
group of men is due the decision to keep all the build- 
ings around the great court of a uniform color, thus 
creating that dream of loveliness — the White City. 
Mr. Burnham, naturally, was inclined to carry out 
what he knew to have been the idea of his beloved 
partner and friend, but under McKim’s quiet persua- 
sive arguments soon yielded and became an enthusi- 
astic supporter of the White City idea. Largely also 
at McKim’s suggestion, Saint-Gaudens was placed in 
charge of the sculpture, bringing with him from the 
East many brilliant men in his profession as likewise 
did Millet, who was placed in charge of the depart- 
ment of color. 

And so the great Fair grew. Never before in Amer- 
ica had there been a real federation of arts, and thus 
it marked a new era for American architecture. Here 
for the first time in this country architects, engineers, 
painters, and sculptors worked together in perfect har- 


57 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

mony, “ Each for the joy of the working," and the 
result was such a dream of beauty as will never be 
forgotten by those who saw it. 

The results of this working together of the artists 
has already led to many great schemes such as the plan 
for Washington and the American Academy at Rome 
of which I shall speak later, and also the comprehem 
sive planning of such cities as Cleveland, Chicago, 
San Francisco, and others. The actually executed 
work of McKim, Mead, and White at the Colunv 
bian Exposition was confined to the great AgricuL 
tural Palace along the south side of the Court of 
Honor, which many critics pronounced the most beam 
tiful building at the Fair; the New York State Builds 
ing, which was a very free adaptation of the Villa 
Medici at Rome, and the White Star Line and Puck 
Buildings ; but the importance of McKiirf s own work 
lay in his power to enter into the bigness of the whole 
conception and work in perfect harmony with other 
minds. Here, as nowhere before in his career, were 
his powers of persuasion and his wonderful tact brought 
into play and here he laid the foundation of that repm 
tation for civic planning which became so great in his 
later years. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN OF THE DISTRICT 

OF COLUMBIA 

The first twenty years of McKnrfs professional 
life from 1880 to 1900 were completely bound up 
withm the work of the firm of McKim, Mead, and 
White, and as has been said, so close was this associa- 
tion that except in a few cases, such as have been men- 
tioned, it is hard to specify particularly the work of 
any one of them. During these years, however, the 
individual reputation of Charles McKim, as leading 
his profession in America, had been growing steadily 
stronger. Public opinion had come to demand his 
judgment on many questions pertaining to civic 
beauty, such as the proper location of statues to dis- 
tinguished men, the planning of decorations in public 
buildings, even the designing of proper pedestals, or 
settings for statues, as well as the criticizing of the 
statues themselves. 

During the latter part of this period, our country 
seems to have experienced a great civic awakening. 
The American people had become dissatisfied with the 


59 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

happy-go-lucky method of planning and building up 
our cities and towns. This was undoubtedly due, in a 
large measure, to the great increase in European travel, 
and to familiarity with the orderly arrangements of 
such cities as Paris and Vienna and Berlin. One of the 
most marked characteristics of the average American is 
his desire, whenever he sees something better than he 
has, to possess it for himself. Our people come home 
from their first trip abroad with their minds filled with 
the beauty of Europe, to find on all hands slovenliness 
and waste. We cannot expect monuments of an- 
tiquity, but we can expect, and demand, orderliness, 
dignity, and beauty. 

In no city was this feeling greater than it was in 
Washington. Not alone from its citizens, permanent 
or temporary, but from the country at large came the 
demand that the National Capital should be a model 
of orderliness, cleanliness, and beauty for the entire 
world. We must show the older nations that a de- 
mocracy is not given over entirely to individual com- 
mercial prosperity, but, on the contrary, is the most 
natural field for the growth and expansion of all that 
pertains to cultivation, refinement, and beauty. 

In 1898 the citizens of the District of Columbia 
began to arrange for a proper celebration of the one 

60 


THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN 

hundredth anniversary of the location of the National 
Capital. In December, 1900, commemorative exer- 
cises were held in both the Capitol and the White 
House. The officers of the Federal Government, the 
Governors of the States, and the representatives of the 
foreign governments all took part in these exercises, 
which were brought to a finish by a reception and ban- 
quet given by the Washington Board of Trade in 
honor of the Congressional Committee and distin- 
guished guests. The main topic of discussion through- 
out this celebration was the improvement and devel- 
opment of the District of Columbia to make it express 
in its physical aspect the dignity and importance of the 
American Nation. The Spanish War had been suc- 
cessfully ended, and we felt ourselves, for the first time 
in our history, a real world-power. Improvements and 
expansion were in the air, and the time had come for 
such improvements and embellishments of Washing- 
ton as to make her oneof the great capitalsof the world. 

At this same time the American Institute of Arch- 
itects was assembled in convention discussing and 
suggesting various improvements in the capital city. 
Papers were read setting forth, in a tentative manner, 
the ideas of leading architects, painters, and sculptors 
for the development of parks and the proper locating 

6 1 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

and grouping of public buildings. A committee was 
appointed by the Institute to lay these matters before 
the Senate and House of Representatives, and as a 
result of these discussions the Senate ordered the pre- 
paration of a general plan for the development of the 
park system of the District of Columbia. Two Sen- 
ators, Mr. McMillan, of Michigan, and Mr. New- 
lands, of Nevada, entered into this scheme with 
utmost enthusiasm, and, by their unselfish services and 
their entire sympathy with the efforts of the American 
Institute of Architects, have done perhaps more than 
any other two men to make possible the carrying out 
of the plans of the so-called Park Commission. 

On the 1 9th of March, 1901, the Sub-Committee 
of the District Committee, which had this matter in 
charge, conferred with the American Institute of Arch- 
itects and agreed that a committee be formed, to be 
called the Park Commission, and to have entire charge 
of the preparation of a plan or plans for the develop- 
ment of the District upon the broadest and most com- 
prehensive lines. This Committee was to consist of 
an architect and a landscape architect with power to 
increase their number. Because of his work in connec- 
tion with the World's Columbian Exposition in Chi- 
cago, which had been at once a revelation and an inspi- 

62 



l’eNFANt’s PLAN OF WASHINGTON 












THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN 

ration to the entire nation, at which time he brought 
together and with rare executive ability maintained a 
perfect accord between architects, painters, and sculp- 
tors, Mr. Daniel H. Burnham, of Chicago, was placed 
at the head of this Commission, and associated with 
him was Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., of Brook- 
line, Massachusetts, whose work in the District of Co- 
lumbia was well and favorably known to Congress. 
These men immediately availed themselves of the per- 
mission to add to their number and invited to serve 
with them Charles F. McKim and Augustus Samt- 
Gaudens. The addition of these two men to the mem- 
bership of the Committee met with the hearty approval 
of Congress and of the people at large. McKim was 
known throughout the country as architect of the 
Boston Public Library, more than for any other one 
achievement, and had already been accorded by his 
fellow-architects the position of head of the profession, 
because of the simplicity, directness, and scholarliness 
of his work, and his rarely sane judgment and exqui- 
site taste ; while the position of Samt-Gaudens aseasily 
first and greatest of American sculptors was beyond 
question. 

All of these men entered upon their work with the 
utmost enthusiasm. Private matters were deliberately 

63 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

laid aside, and for more than a year all of their time 
was devoted to the absorbing task of preparing a plan 
which should carefully preserve what was already 
beautiful in Washington and make possible its beconv 
ing, in time, the most beautiful city in the world. 
During the preparation of the plan the Commission 
visited all of the great cities of Europe, studying care' 
fully everything that could be of use for the beautify' 
ing and improving of the city by the Potomac. In ad' 
dition to the usual city problems of circulation, traffic, 
sanitation, and public parks, other very important queS' 
tions were given most careful consideration, and in all 
these discussions, I have been told by Mr. Burnham 
himself, the opinions of McKim were given greatest 
weight. Here more than anywhere else did his inher' 
ent love for tradition and history come to the front. 

The original plan of Washington, which had been 
prepared by Major L’Enfant under the direct supervis' 
ion of Washington and Jefferson, was given most care' 
ful study. Both Washington and Jefferson had felt the 
influence of the art of landscape architecture as they 
had seen it practiced by royal governors and wealthy 
planters, while Jefferson had visited and admired the 
stately capitals of Europe and had been particularly 
impressed with the work of LeNotre. His own home, 

64 



PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE COMMISSION S PLAN OF THE MALL, WASHINGTON 

















THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN 

Monticello, was in those early days the most dignified 
estate in the United States, and in his library were ac- 
curate plans of Paris, Frankfort, Amsterdam, Milan, 
and other European cities. L’Enfant himself was a 
man of cultivation and position, and an engineer of 
recognized ability, and so pleased was Jefferson with 
Washington’s choice of such a man to prepare the 
plans for the future Federal City that he turned over 
to him all the data in his own library. 

McKim, of course, recognized the potential beauties 
of the original plan in spite of the departures which 
successive Congresses had made from it, and main- 
tained in every conference with the other members 
of the Committee that this plan must be kept, as 
far as possible, in its entirety. The main feature of 
L’Enfant’s plan was the Mall stretching from the Cap- 
itol Building to the Potomac. The whole city was laid 
out with a system of great avenues, connecting future 
centers and crossed by streets on the usual rectangular 
plan. The avenues were given unusual breadth, and 
when they and the streets intersected, ornamental cir- 
cles or squares were planned with the idea of these cir- 
cles or squares being embellished with fountains or 
statues, and forming open parks for recreation and 
pleasure. The greatest of these avenues, Pennsylvania, 

65 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

was to form a direct axis between the Capitol Build' 
ing and the President’s residence. This axis was unfor^ 
tunately destroyed by the location of the Treasury 
Building, while the Mall had been completely cut in 
two by the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad Conv 
pany. 

The Commission at once realized that the preserva^ 
tion and restoration of the Mall was the most import 
tant feature in the plan of the city, the one unique 
distinction which it possessed, but at this time plans 
had already been prepared for the enlargement of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Station, with greatly increased 
track area. Fortunately for the city and the country 
at large, the then President of the Pennsylvania RaiL 
road, Mr. Alexander J. Cassatt, was a man of high 
patriotism and distinguished cultivation. When he 
was taken to the Capitol Terrace by the members of 
the Commission and the possibilities of the Mall were 
pointed out to him, he at once realized that the railroad 
tracks formed an unsurmountable obstacle to any really 
great improvement, and of his own volition proposed 
to give up the railroad’s property in the Mall, provided 
another equally good entrance to the city and the a> 
operation of Congress could be assured. Such a propo^ 
sition coming from the head of the railroad company 

66 



PLAN OF THE MONUMENT GARDEN, WASHINGTON 
















THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN 

was, naturally, of greatest help to the Commission. 
Steps were immediately taken which resulted in the 
complete vacation of the Mall by the railroad, and the 
building of Mr. Burnham’s splendid station, which 
now forms so admirable an entrance to Washington. 

With the railroad tracks removed, the study of the 
Mall advanced rapidly, but one other opposing feature 
to the idea of two great axes intersecting each other at 
right angles, one from the Capitol through the center 
of the Mall to the river, and the other from the center 
of the White House lot to the river, was discovered in 
the location of the Washington Monument, which 
had been placed so far to the north of the central axis 
of the White House that to use it as a point of inter- 
section was impossible. Many years ago, when the 
monument was first started, Charles Bulfinch,of Bos- 
ton, whohad been appointed Architect of the Capitol by 
President Monroe, had said that a colonnade around 
the base of the obelisk was needed to give the shaft 
scale and dignity. The Commission realized that some 
such embellishment was greatly needed, but such a 
colonnade would forever destroy the possibility of in- 
tersecting axes, so that the proper treatment of the 
monument was the subject of exhaustive study. The 
solution, embodied in the report of the Commission, of 

67 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

a great terrace with steps leading down into a formal 
garden, centered on the point of intersection of the two 
axes, was the idea of Charles McKim. This solution 
is so perfect in dignity and beauty that it is, indeed, 
fortunate that the monument stands where it does. 
Most careful drawings of this proposed monument, ter" 
race, and garden, as well as of all the improvements 
suggested by the Commission, were prepared by diE 
ferent artists, and these drawings with accurate models 
of the city as it was, and the city as it would be, were 
exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, and 
at other galleries in various large cities of the country, 
and aroused the greatest enthusiasm among the people 
at large. The full report of the Commission was pub" 
lished with many illustrations. This report is so com" 
plete, and such interesting reading, going as it does into 
details of everything pertaining to a great, beautiful, 
and healthy city, that I regret the impossibility of pub" 
lishing it complete in this memoir, especially as one 
cannot but recognize in reading it the influence of Me" 
Kim’s conservative mind, preserving carefully every 
important feature of the original plan, and looking 
with large foresight to the future growth of the city, 
and planning everything on the broadest lines. 

With the preparation of the report, which was the 

68 



MONUMENT TERRACE LOOKING TOWARD THE CAPITOL 





THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN 

work of over a year of continual labor on the part of 
each member of the Commission, the real work was 
hardly begun. The whole matter had to be laid before 
Congress and, as was natural, met with strong opposi- 
tion. Here McKim came prominently forward, and 
at no time in his career did his personality count for 
more. He persuaded his opponents but never argued, 
and as he never yielded a point when once convmcedof 
the rightness of his position, his quiet tact and persist- 
ence, combined with his keen sense of humor, carried 
the day. It was during the sittings of the Commission 
that he was entrusted with the remodeling of the White 
House and the building of the new War College, each 
of which was sufficient to occupy all the time of one 
man, but he cheerfully undertook all this work and 
carried it through. He was so much in Washington 
that he became closely identified with the social life of 
the city, where his wonderful charm of manner made 
him an ever welcome guest, and even after his most 
arduous work at Washington was completed, he was 
continually sent for to be consulted about various mat- 
ters pertaining to the beautifying of the city. Wffien 
after his death, a Memorial Meeting was held, in the 
Corcoran Gallery on December 13, 1 909, among the 
many tributes paid to him as a man and an artist the 

69 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


Hon. Elihu Root spoke so clearly and concisely of his 
work in connection with the War College and the 
White House that I feel his words should here be 
quoted in full: — 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

There was a great meeting two weeks ago in the New Thea- 
tre in New York, called by the united action of a great number 
of societies devoted to different branches of art, for the purpose 
of voicing their universal sentiment of honor to the memory and 
mourning for the loss of Charles McKim. At the meeting I said 
what 1 had to say in tribute to his memory, but I cannot resist 
the feeling that it is appropriate that it should be supplemented 
by this meeting here, held under the auspices of the American 
Institute of Architects, representing his own profession and the 
brethren among whom he had worked with such loyal friend-' 
ship and co-operation for many years, and held here in the City 
of Washington where, it seems to me, the brightest and loftiest 
development and expression in his character and his genius 
occurred. 

Charles McKim was a conspicuous member of the little group 
of men who in the planning and building of the White City by 
the Lake at Chicago, sixteen years ago, turned the current of 
American feeling and opinion upon all matters of art. No greater 
epoch in the life of art ever was than that which is marked by 
the influence and the new impulse in the minds of the millions 
of men and women of this great and rich and powerful and pro- 
gressive country, who received a new impression of beauty and 
dignitv in art by their visit to that wonderful exhibition. It has 
seemed to me that there was as great an influence upon the 
minds and character of the men who did the work as there was 


7 ° 



MONUMENT GARDEN AND TERRACE LOOKING TOWARD THE WHITE HOUSE 























THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN 


upon the people who saw it and learned its lesson. There has 
been with all of them, and notably and pre-eminently, I should say, 
with McKim, from that day forth a breadth of public spirit and 
devotion of their art to the public service such as we never had 
before. Charles McKim was peculiarly fitted by habit of his 
mind, by his character and by the tendencies of his art to correct 
some of the chief thoughts of the American temperament. He 
despised and shrank from the merely ingenuous and fantastical, 
through which amateurs in the beginning of a desire for orna- 
ment are apt to express themselves. The tendency was to hold 
fast to all that was good in the past, to anchor to the great achieve- 
ments past, and to aim to adapt the established principles of art 
to the new conditions to which his problems related ; and so when 
he came when he was called to apply his art to the solving of 
the problems that lay before us in Washington, it was natural for 
him not to attempt some great and brilliant achievement, but to 
study the history of our country, and to study the history of the 
arts that could be brought to illustrate and express the history of 
our country here. The Commission for the Development of the 
Park System of Washington did not attempt to evolve something 
from their inner consciousness, or to present some plan which 
should be marked by their names and lead all the world to praise 
their ingenuity or their inventive genius. They went back to 
the plans of L’Enfant and Washington, and with them in mind 
they went all over the world and studied all the great specimens 
of the past through which similar problems had been worked 
out, and they brought here upon their return the wealth of all the 
ages and a keen appreciation of our own history and produced a 
plan and development of L’Enfant’s plan for the beautification of 
Washington, for the development of its park system, which I be- 
lieve is as certain to be followed as the sun is to rise to-morrow. 


7 1 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


Unfortunately, the immediate acceptance of the plan is hindered 
by a wretched little controversy about the authority under which 
it was created ; but that is a temporary matter. We cannot go on 
forever rejecting the best work of our best men along the lines 
that our nation is following in all of our great and progressive 
cities we cannot go on forever rejecting that because of a lit' 
tie quarrel over the authority out of which it arose. 

Mr. McKim was consulted by the War Department when it 
came to the building of the War College and the Engineer’s 
School in the Old Washington Barracks Reservation. He made 
the plans and he put up the buildings. There was a charming 
illustration of his character in the course of that work. The com 
struction was put in charge of a very able officer of the Engk 
neering Corps, who brought to it the rules and traditions of a 
strict utilitarianism. For months it seemed as if there was an 
irrepressible conflict between the engineer and the artist ; it 
seemed as if nothing hut the brute power of the War Depart' 
ment could settle it. But as time went on the old story of the 
sun and the north wind with the traveler repeated itself. The 
gentle insistence and unswerving constancy of McKim carried 
the day, and it was but a short time before the engineer officer 
was the most ardent admirer and loyal follower of the artist, and 
all controversy disappeared, and the War College to'day seems to 
me to be a very wonderful and charming example of architec' 
ture, perfectly adapted to its purpose and expressive of the char' 
acter of the institution. 

When he came to repair or restore the White House, he 
found there were plans, plans which looked to the building of 
great pavilions at either end of the Old White House. It would 
have been splendid, would have been much admired, would have 
redounded to the glory of any architect; but it would have 


7 2 



FTTrrra 


BULFINCH S DESIGN FOR. COMPLETION OF THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT 

















THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN 


dwarfed and pushed back into insignificance the plain, simple, 
old White House, and McKim with his reverent spirit, his self' 
restraint, sought in the history of the White House and the his' 
tory of the time from which it came the spirit in which he was 
to work. Time and time again he has come to me and talked 
about what he had found at Monticello, what he had found 
here and there all over the country in the way of remaining 
buildings that expressed the spirit of the time of Washington and 
of Jefferson. He sought for the foundations of the old east wing 
which was destroyed, I suppose, and never rebuilt after the fire 
of 1814 — at all events it had long disappeared — and he put 
back the White House as nearly as possible as it was originally, 
except that he took out all the poor material and put in the best 
material ; he took out all of the gingerbread confectioner’s work 
that had been put in in the course of years and replaced it by 
simple and dignified work, and he left us the White House a 
perfect example of an American gentleman’s home on the banks 
of the Potomac. 

I told him once of something that some one had said about the 
office building — the President’s office building. There was geiv 
eral criticism, and the members of our Congress generally failed 
to see where the money had gone, because the great pavilion 
had not been kept ; but the thing that I told him was that some 
one had said that the President’s office building looked like a 
stable. “Ah,” he said, “ that is the best thing that has been said 
about it yet. I wanted it to look like a simple dependency of the 
main building, and this criticism shows that I have accomplished 
what 1 sought.” It was not alone in the matters where he was 
directly intrusted with the prosecution of work as an architect or 
as a member of the Commission that he was of service. We got 
in the way of calling upon him for advice upon all sorts of ques' 


73 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


tions relating to memorials, to statues and to buildings in the 
city of Washington certain that his correct taste, his carefully stu' 
died views would prevent any error being made. He was called 
upon to pass upon the designs for the Grant Memorial, which is 
now under construction, and he was called upon to pass upon the 
location, and a battle royal occurred over the design and a still 
more serious conflict over the location ; hut he was tenacious and 
unyielding in his contention for what he was sure was right and 
best, and he prevailed. When we came to build the new build' 
ing for the international Union of American Republics, which 
is now nearing completion, fronting on the White Lot on the 
east and on the Potomac Park on the south, there was a great 
competition of more than a hundred architects who sent in com' 
petitive designs and they elected Mr. McKim, with Mr. Lord 
and Mr. Hornbostel, to make the selection from the designs. 
They all agreed upon the design, which is now being followed, 
and when that had been done the characteristic occurred, for 
McKim said : “ Now I would like very much, as this design has 
been determined upon, to make some suggestions. I think all 
of our Committee would he glad to go over these plans with 
the architects, and possibly we may make criticisms and sugges' 
tions which would better he done now than after the building 
is put up” ; and the architects, of course, were delighted and 
they submitted their plans; many invaluable suggestions were 
made, the plans were worked over and still again ; and the cor' 
rect taste of McKim goes into that building also, as it has into 
the White House, as it did into the War College, and as it will 
ultimately appear in the great park system of Washington. 

Our President needed to add nothing to the many reasonsthat 
I have for respect and affection for him ; hut he did add to both 
of those by the steadfastness and general appreciation with which 


74 


THE PARK COMMISSION PLAN 


he stood by McKim in his strenuous efforts to prevent the park 
system plan from being overslaughed and rendered impossible 
by subsequent inconsistent construction. 

All of this work illustrated not only McKim’s character as an 
artist, but his unselfishness, his love of his country, his pride in 
the Capital City, which we all believe is to be so beautiful and 
so noble. He did love his country and he was willing to spend 
himself without stint, in order that his art might do its part in a 
noble and adequate expression of all that was best in his country’s 
life. Many great and noble lives have entered into the structure 
of American Government and American freedom, but none in 
executive chair or in legislative hall deserves a higher meed of 
appreciation and grateful recognition for noble service to our 
country than the life of Charles McKim. It was the last thought 
in his mind, but it should be the first in ours. By the side of 
L’Enfant, Thornton, Hoban, Latrobe, and Bulfinch, the name of 
Charles Follen McKim should always be perpetuated among the 
builders the great genius' gifted builders — of what is to be, I 
believe, the most noble and beautiful city in the world. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE PENNSYLVANIA TERMINAL 

It was undoubtedly the intimacy fostered by close 
association in connection with the improvements in 
Washington between Mr. McKim and Mr. Cassatt 
which led the latter to entrust to McKim, Mead, and 
White, without any question of competition, the 
building of the Pennsylvania Railroad Station in Mam 
hattan. In 1871 the Pennsylvania Railroad Company 
secured by leases the control of the United Railroads 
of New Jersey which terminate in Jersey City. From 
that time the desire of the railroad was to get into or 
onto Manhattan Island, and many plans were con.' 
sidered, only to be set aside as impractical. The panics 
of 1873 and 1 884 made it impossible to finance any 
great undertaking from which there could be no imme/ 
diate return. The beginningsof the Hudson Terminal 
scheme first suggested tunnels under the North River, 
but the engineering obstacles to such a plan were 
deemed unsurmountable. In 1884, the papers were 
filled with the reports of a suspension bridge over the 
North River, having a span almost twice as great as 

76 


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PLAN OF THE PENNSYLVANIA STATION, NEW YORK 








THE PENNSYLVANIA TERMINAL 

the Brooklyn Bridge. This, too, was given up largely 
because of the active opposition of the river traffic. 

In 1899, Alexander J. Cassatt became President of 
the Pennsylvania Railroad. That he was a man of 
large vision we have already seen, in his having volun- 
tarily given up the Mall property in Washington. To 
such a man physical obstacles are as nothing in com- 
parison with an ideal to be realized. Many of his 
most devoted supporters after the work on the ter- 
minal improvements was begun offered him nothing 
but discouragement at the inception of the scheme. In 
1892, the subject of tunneling under the river was 
again revived, careful surveys were made, and a num- 
ber of different plans submitted, but the silver panic 
of 1893 again made the financing of such a project 
impossible. The purchasing of the control of the Long 
Island Railroad by the Pennsylvania in 1900 made a 
physical connection between the two railroads a ne- 
cessity. During all these years the population of New 
York and the surrounding cities had grown by leaps 
and bounds, increasing by thirty-eight per cent in the 
area of Greater New York between 1890 and 1903. 
If the Pennsylvania Company were to secure and re- 
tain their legitimate share of the traffic of handling 
such a population, immediate action, in the judgment 


77 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

of Mr. Cassatt, was necessary. No makeshift schemes 
appealed to him ; only a great station in the heart of 
Manhattan Island could satisfy his dreams for the fu- 
ture growth and supremacy of the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road. To accomplish this before the cost should be- 
come prohibitive or the accomplishment of the work 
impossible, because of the construction of other under- 
ground lines, demanded instant work. The plan as 
conceived in the mind of Mr. Cassatt seemed to his 
associates at first hearing like a dream from the “ Ara- 
bian Nights,” but only those “who dream dreams and 
see visions” accomplish the impossible and the enthu- 
siasm of the leader soon fired his associates. 

The plan as outlined, and as it was afterwards car- 
ried out, involved not only the acquiring of sufficient 
land in the heart of the city for a station to meet the 
wants of the people for years to come, but it was also 
considered necessary to offer to Newark and the other 
cities in New Jersey and to the residential sections of 
Long Island quick transportation to New York and 
intercommunication and to provide all-rail connec- 
tions between the South and West on one side and 
New England and the East on the other. One can 
easily imagine the eager sympathy with which Mc- 
Kim entered into these schemes. The designing of 

78 



SEVENTH AVENUE FACADE, PENNSYLVANIA STATION 





THE PENNSYLVANIA TERMINAL 

the portal to the Capital City had been entrusted to 
Burnham as head of the Park Commission, but here 
was a greater portal to a far greater city than any other 
in the Western World. The bringing of the trains into 
New York and other structural problems had been 
worked out by the engineers, but the designing of a 
station to meet the new conditions was surely a prob- 
lem of sufficient magnitude to fire the ambition of any 
man. 

Many studies were made of most different types, 
but always the architects saw before them the great 
baths of Rome, magnificent in their dignity and sim- 
plicity, the greatest examples in history of large areas 
roofed over and treated in a monumental manner. Two 
ideas were predominant from the very beginning : the 
building must at once express a great railway station 
under the unusual conditions of having the tracks so 
far below ground that no outward expression of their 
existence was possible, and it must also stand as the 
great monumental gateway to the metropolis. In ad- 
dition to these main ideas the station was so planned 
as to give the greatest number of lines of circulation in 
order to avoid congestion of traffic. How this was ac- 
complished can best be understood by a glance at the 
plan. 


79 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

The central feature is the great waiting-room which 
can be approached from the center of the Seventh 
Avenue facade through the arcade of shops which 
carries Thirty-second Street direct to the waiting-room, 
also from Thirty-first and Thirty-third Streets and 
from the carriage court at either end. In this main 
waiting-room are ticket offices, telephones and tele- 
graph, news-stand and other conveniences for the 
traveler, so located as to save any unnecessary steps. 
Between the mam waiting-room and the train con- 
course are two large subsidiary waiting-rooms, one for 
men and one for women. These rooms, as well as the 
main waiting-room, open directly into the great train 
concourse from which very easy flights of steps lead 
down to the trains. This concourse can also be reached 
by easy stairs from Eighth Avenue and from Thirty- 
first Street and Thirty-third Street, without going 
through the main station. At the west end of the 
Thirty-second Street arcade is a colonnaded loggia 
from which one enters the restaurant on the one side 
and the lunch-room on the other. Sloping driveways, 
over sixty feet in width along Thirty-first Street and 
Thirty-third Street, carry vehicles down to the waiting- 
room level direct from Seventh Avenue. 

Such in brief are the main features of the plan, 

80 



ENTRANCE TO ARCADE, PENNSYLVANIA STATION, FROM MAIN WAITING-ROOM 



THE PENNSYLVANIA TERMINAL 

which is surely one of greatest simplicity and convene 
ience. In no other large station are the incoming and 
outgoing passengers kept more separate so that even 
in the rush hours the station never seems crowded. 
Another convenience for the public is the mezzanine 
concourse halfway between the tram level and the 
main concourse floor, from which concourse one can 
go direct from his train to Seventh or Eighth Avenue 
or to Thirty-first Street, Thirty-third or Thirty-fourth 
Street, or can change from the Pennsylvania to the 
Long Island trains without climbing up to the street 
level, as what is really a separate and complete station 
is provided for the Long Island Road at the north- 
western corner of the building at the lower level. 

So much for the practical features which do so much 
for comfort and convenience of the traveler. Upon the 
solution of these questions depends much of the suc- 
cess of any building, but these questions, though they 
be ever so perfectly solved, do not satisfy the natural 
demands to be made of such a building as the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad Company proposed to build in New 
York. To do this, those qualities which make for real 
architecture, dignity, proportion, and beauty were, in 
the mind of Mr. Cassatt, quite as necessary as the ones 
already spoken of, and these qualities McKim was 

81 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

called upon to produce. That he did so in this as in 
so many other cases no one can deny, but what makes 
the architectural solution of the Pennsylvania Station 
supremely interesting is the fact that it was the last 
work in which he took any active part, and to one who 
has studied the growth of his style it seems to be the 
fulfillment of everything for which he had striven 
so hard, the visible embodiment of those principles to 
which he had given his life. 

When the actual working drawings for the Penn-- 
sylvania Station were commenced, McKim’s health 
had begun to fail so rapidly that he was not able to 
give any attention to the study of the details. The 
original conception was inspired by him and in its 
development he took the deepest interest, but his as- 
sistants, and among them notably Mr. Richardson, 
worked out the details and 'developed the conception 
into the beautiful structure which is such a monument 
to New York. Looking down Thirty-second Street 
from Broadway the picture which fills the eye, of a 
great Doric portal, behind which rises one of the lofty 
semicircular windows of the waiting-room, is at once 
expressive of the whole idea, the gateway to a great 
city : not a gateway in a solid wall of fortifications as 
in the ancient city, but the modern gateway through 

82 



MAIN WAITING-ROOM, PENNSYLVANIA STATION 








THE PENNSYLVANIA TERMINAL 

which thousands are daily brought to and taken home 
from the city by means of electricity and steam ; in 
other words, a railway station, the only possible portal 
under the conditions of modern life. Standing at the 
corner of Broadway and Thirty-second Street at any 
hour of a clear afternoon, the color effect of the station 
against the blue of the sky is one of such beauty that 
it almost hurts, it is so simple, so pure, so serene. 

Go inside the Seventh Avenue portal, through the 
arcade lined with shops, and stop at the head of the 
stairway leading down into the waiting-room ; at 
every step it grows more wonderful, so that instinc- 
tively one lowers one's voice as one takes in slowly the 
intense beauty of this gigantic room. Is this a railroad 
station, a place of dust and noise and hurry ? Where 
are the things one always associates with such a place ) 
Look around ; it is not necessary to ask a single ques- 
tion, everything the traveler can demand is before him, 
and all distinctly marked and so located as to serve him 
with greatest convenience and expedition. It is hardly 
comprehensible that this can be the waiting-room of 
a railway station ; this great hall of simple and lofty 
proportions, flooded with the light of day, warm in 
color from the mellow tones of the Travertine stone, 
here used for the first time in America ; almost entirely 

83 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

devoid of decoration except for those marvelous maps 
which Jules Guerin has painted on the walls. Yes, 
these are maps, questioning traveler, real railroad maps, 
and absolutely correct in the drawing, these exquisite 
harmonies of blue and buff. 

Go on into the concourse from which one enters 
one's train ; still no noise, no dirt, no confusion. You 
are in an even larger room than the main waitings 
room, a room as light as out of doors, for it is really a 
court covered with glass. The steel structure support- 
ing this glass roof is again devoid of ornamentation or 
embellishment of any sort, but wonderfully impress- 
ive from the supreme beauty of line and function like 
the lean, lithe frame of a young athlete stripped of 
every ounce of superfluous flesh. From this concourse 
one descends by very easy steps to a platform on the 
level of the floor of the cars, which are entered with- 
out the usual steep platform steps. It is all so simple, 
so serene, so beautiful, that even when once seated 
in the tram it is hard to realize that one has been 
through that which, at the time of its completion, was 
the largest railway station in the world. Did McKim, 
whose health had for some years been failing, and who 
felt that he was near the end of his period of active ser- 
vice, see before him more clearly the vision of the great 

84 



THE CONCOURSE, PENNSYLVANIA STATION 












THE PENNSYLVANIA TERMINAL 

orderly, simple civilization of which he had always 
dreamed, and for the realization of which he had so 
devotedly and unselfishly worked ) I think it must 
have been so. This was a type of what the civiliza- 
tion of to-morrow already demands, calmness, order, 
beauty. All these are to be found embodied and glo- 
rified in the Pennsylvania Station, a mighty portal, a 
perpetual gateway to a great modern city. “ Lift up 
your heads, oh, ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye ever- 
lasting doors/' These inspired words come to one's 
mind when gazing upon this poem in stone, the off- 
spring of modern science and modern art. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 

McKim's interest in everything that helped young 
men to fit themselves for the practice of architecture 
was second only to his interest in architecture itself 
One can readily imagine that when he first visited 
Italy his enthusiasm and delight over the buildings of 
antiquity which he saw in Rome must have been in- 
tense. Mr. Peabody has told us how his natural trend 
of mind led him to Rome rather than to Paris for real 
artistic inspiration. After that first visit he went to 
Italy many times, and that he reveled in the beauties 
of Florence and Venice and the smaller Italian towns 
has been shown in his work, but it was always to Rome 
that he went for his deepest inspiration. Whether the 
idea of an Academy in Rome for American students 
came to him on these early visits, we know not, as this 
idea took no tangible shape until the completion of 
the buildings and grounds for the World's Fair at Chi- 
cago in 1893. This Exhibition has been the mspira- 
tion and starting-point of many great artistic move- 
ments in America, but I think none has been and will 

86 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 

continue to be of such lasting value to the American 
people as this Academy, planted in the heart of the 
world, where students from the newest of Republics 
can study the monuments and documents of that first 
great Republic which for centuries ruled the world. It 
was a notable body of men which created that dream 
of beauty on the shores of Lake Michigan, and the asso- 
ciations formed at that time when, to slightly alter the 
words of Kipling : — 

Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his Separate Star, 
Created the Thing as he saw it for the God of Things as They 
Are ! — 

have, as I have said in a previous chapter, been most 
far-reaching in their influence. 

The avidity with which McKim took hold of the 
idea of a School of Architecture in Rome and the en- 
ergy and zeal with which he pushed it unto his death, 
and even afterwards as I shall show, makes one feel 
that it was no sudden impulse created by the inspira- 
tion of the World’s Fair, but an idea which had long 
lam dormant in his brain. The men who founded the 
American Academy were thoroughly familiarwith the 
history, the tradition, and the work of the French 
Academy, which had been founded in the reign of 

87 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

Louis XIV, and which perhaps more than any other 
one thing had fostered and kept alive the traditions of 
classical art in France, and had enabled her to maintain 
her supremacy in architecture, painting, and sculpture 
through more than two centuries. 

McKim’s dream was to establish a great national 
post-graduate school where students in the three arts 
could live and work together as had the architects, 
painters, and sculptors during the planning and execu- 
tion of the World’s Fair. No one ever realized more 
clearly than he the great inspiration and help to a stu- 
dent to be derived from contact with other men of 
other minds, but inspired by one great ideal. The 
condition of the public mind in America, until the 
World’s Fair, was one of absolute indifference towards 
art in any of its phases. It is true that in such cities as 
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston there 
were earnest groups of men striving with all their 
might not only to create the beautiful in itself, but also 
to create a demand for beauty, but it was generally 
“ love’s labor lost.” 

In the face of such general indifference the task of 
founding and maintaining such a school as the pro- 
posed Academy was an almost Herculean one. Money 
was to be procured, the public to be educated up to the 

88 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 

idea, students to be told of the advantages of such a 
school and their enthusiasm for it to be aroused, and 
above all a vast amount of prejudice against any for^ 
eign school to be overcome ; for all the men interested 
in its foundation, and above all McKim, felt that such 
a school should be established only in Rome. No 
other spot could present such advantages and make it 
possible for the school to realize for its students the 
benefits which its founders had in mind. 

In order at least to make a beginning, when he 
found the time not favorable for the establishment of 
a full-fledged Academy, McKim founded, in 1 894, the 
McKim Fellowship in Architecture at Columbia Uni' 
versity giving for its endowment twenty thousand dob 
lars. This was a traveling fellowship and the winner 
was compelled to study abroad. In the same year, in 
order to provide headquarters for the winners of the 
McKim Fellowship, the Rotch Traveling Scholarship, 
a Boston foundation, and the Stewardson Memorial 
Scholarship of the University of Pennsylvania, he 
established the American School of Architecture in 
Rome. For this purpose quarters were taken in the 
Palazzo Torlonia, and here the school was opened with 
Mr. Austin Lord as Director and the first winners of 
the three scholarships, Messrs. Pope, Magonigle, and 

89 


CHARLES FOLLEN McfCIM 


Ash, as students. This was the beginning of what is 
now the American Academy. 

In i 895, the Peabody Institute of Baltimore estaR 
lished the Rinehart Scholarship in Sculpture, and in 
1896, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the 
Lazarus Scholarship for the study of mural painting. 
These establishments made feasible the enlarging of 
the held of the little School of Architecture, and in 
1898 it was reincorporated under the laws of the State 
of New York, the title being changed to “The Amen 
lean Academy in Rome.” 

As many people have asked why these men should 
be so anxious to establish an American Academy in 
Rome and why students in America should be sent 
there particularly, I shall quote the views of three of 
the founders upon this subject. 

Charles McKim, who was first President of the 
Academy, said : — 

The advantages which Rome has to offer to students of archh 
tecture and the allied arts need not be urged. What with its 
architectural and sculptural monuments, its mural paintings, its 
galleries filled with great works of every epoch, no other city 
offers such a field for study or an atmosphere so replete with the 
best precedents. Brunelleschi, Alberti, and Bramante are among 
those who head the list of the enthusiastic students of the antique 
which has continued down to our day and which contains repre' 


90 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 


sentatives from every country. Raphael, architect as well as 
painter, devoted himself with unceasing ardor to the examina' 
tion and measurements of the monuments of Rome, and not only 
undertook to restore particular buildings, but even conceived 
the vast project of the restoration of the city in its ensemble. 

Augustus Samt-Gaudens, unquestionably the great- 
est American sculptor and until his death actively in- 
terested in the development of the Academy,wrote: — ■ 

The conditions of life with us make the long and serious pre' 
paration necessary for the thorough training of an artist almost 
an impossibility, and the temptations to plunge into an active 
career with immature preparation are constant and inevitable. 
To take the best of the young men and protect them from these 
temptations as well as to give them great advantages of surround' 
ings and general atmosphere is one of the principal benefits of 
such an institution. 

John LaFarge, our first mural painter, also believed 
in the desirability of such an institution, and has said : 

It seems to me, that above all other nations, we can be bene' 
fited by the establishment of an Academy at Rome. We could 
open to all the forces of Art which Italy has nurtured minds more 
free than those at the other academies, less weighted by preju' 
dices, of more varied types and with an infinitely more open fu' 
ture. At the same time, whatever there is of restraint, or order, 
of what is properly education, is exactly the force needed to knit 
together our rather loose energy. Such study would free us from 
the subserviency of other European training, for the extremely 
sensitive mind of the artist is especially impressed by authority 


9 1 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

and it is evidently desirable that that authority, however various, 
should be the highest that we know. 

These expressions of opinion, so decidedly in favor 
of the Academy, from the most recognized authori- 
ties in the three great Arts naturally influenced public 
opinion and did much to remove popular prejudices. 
In 1898, after the incorporation of the Academy, it 
soon became evident that the quarters in the Palazzo 
Torlonia were no longer adequate and that larger 
quarters with studios were necessary. It having be- 
come possible to secure by lease the Casino of the Villa 
Ludovisi, better known as the Villa delf Aurora, the 
Academy leased this building, which was all that re- 
mained of that once famous villa whose grounds had 
been sold piecemeal and are now covered by modern 
buildings. Here the Academy remained for nine years, 
and in a way took root among the recognized institu- 
tions of the Eternal City. Each year returning students 
proved by their work the real value of the institution 
and the Trustees and Founders, fired by these evi- 
dences of awakening public interest, began to make 
more strenuous efforts to put the Academy upon a 
solid financial basis. 

In 1901, the Secretary of State authorized the 
American Ambassador to Italy to become ex-officio 


92 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 


Trustee of the Academy and to use all his influence to 
gain for it from the Italian Government all the privfo 
leges and exemptions granted to similar institutions 
of other nations. During all these years McKim had 
never ceased his efforts to arouse public interest and to 
secure needed funds for the maintenance of the nv 
stitution. In his address to the Convention of the 
American Institute of Architects in 1903 at the time 
he retired from the presidency of the Institute he 
said : — 


The movement to endow an American Academy of Fine Arts 
in Rome on the general lines of the French Academy in the Villa 
Medici is not new to you. Until now dependent for support upon 
the insufficient means at the command of the incorporators 
(members of the Institute) the number of scholars has of neces- 
sity been small and the conveniences for work not such as would 
be afforded by an older welbequipped and welhendowed institu- 
tion. Nevertheless, in spite of its vicissitudes, such has been the 
quality of the work, so able the few men turned out and so strong 
the conviction of those most deeply interested in the need for an 
institution offering a post-graduate course intended only for those 
who shall be already technically equipped, that a bill for the in- 
corporation of the American Academy in Rome by Act of Con- 
gress, and asking for the protection of the United States Govern- 
ment was introduced in 1901 by the late Senator McMillan. The 
persons named as incorporators, besides the leading architects, 
painters and sculptors, include the great Universities represented 
by their Presidents, the Secretaries of State and War, the Libra- 


93 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

rian of Congress, the Government Architect and a considerable 
number of men chosen from the community at large, known for 
their interest in art and education. 

It was McKim’s hope to raise an endowment fund 
of one million dollars, the interest of this amount be- 
ing almost equal to the income granted the French 
Academy by the Government of France. He proposed 
to do this by securing ten subscriptions of one hun- 
dred thousand dollars each, and, had his life been 
spared, he would undoubtedly have accomplished 
this. At the Convention of the American Institute 
of Architects, held in Washington in January, 1 905, 
McKim was able to announce that two of the ten 
subscriptions towards this fund had been promised by 
Mr. Henry Walters, of Baltimore, and Mr.J. Pierpont 
Morgan, of New York. 

The bill incorporating the Academy as a national 
institution was passed by Congress and signed by Presi- 
dent Roosevelt on March 3, 1903, and the institution 
was immediately given a standing in Europe which it 
could not have otherwise acquired. McKim at once 
redoubled his efforts towards raising the endowment 
fund and obtained promises of subscriptions from Mr. 
W. K. Vanderbilt, Mr. W.J. Stillman, Mr. H.C. Frick, 
and Mr. H. L. Higginson conditioned upon the secur- 

94 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 

ing of the ten subscriptions needed to bring the fund 
up to a million dollars. Pending the raising of the full 
amount, these gentlemen have generously given each 
year the interest on their subscriptions, so that by care' 
ful management the Academy has been able to pn> 
ceed with its work without any serious discomfort or 
inconvenience. 

The object of the Academy is to offer to its students 
every opportunity for study and development, each in 
his chosen art, in an atmosphere remote from the temp' 
tations of commercialism. Mr. Blashfield has said, 
“The man who has inherited a temperament and aC' 
quired a technique may learn in Rome a lesson from 
a higher example than any he has seen, the cumula' 
tive example of twenty centuries of Art.” In order that 
the student may approach his work with a mind free 
from financial worries, the Academy provides him with 
lodging and studio and gives him each year one thou' 
sand dollars, but it insists that during his course of 
study he receive neither employment nor commissions. 

The winner of the Academy Prize of Rome has 
before him three years of travel and study, three years 
of unrivaled opportunities for the acquirement of 
knowledge of all that is best in his chosen art, but the 
amount of his acquirement depends absolutely upon 

95 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

himself. The programme for the work allows him 
during the first year ample time in which to become 
accustomed to his new environment and to absorb 
some of the atmosphere of culture of a civilization that 
has ripened with the centuries. The programme is one 
of suggestion rather than compulsion, it being assumed 
that no man could secure the Prize of Rome before he 
had, in a way, found himself and determined quite 
definitely upon his life's work. The requirements for 
the first year are, for a painter, a copy of an old mas- 
ter, a study of some mural painting with its own sur- 
roundings, and the decorative treatment of a life-size 
figure from nature. A sculptor must submit studies 
from the antique and a life-size relief. An architect is 
expected carefully to measure and draw an ancient 
building and to make comparative studies of the pro- 
portions of plans, domes, halls, etc. In addition, each 
student is expected during his first year to spend four 
months traveling upon the mainland of Italy. In the 
second year, after the students have become more ac- 
customed to the atmosphere of Italy and have begun 
to realize the inestimable value of contact between 
disciples of the three arts, in addition to a special type 
of work for each department, the three, architect, 
painter, and sculptor, are required to collaborate in 

96 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 

making a drawing or model in which the three arts 
shall be equally represented. In the second and third 
year more time is allowed for travel, and the students 
are expected to visit other countries besides Italy, the 
architects being expected to go as far as Greece and 
spend some time in study there. 

It will be seen from this brief outline that the mmd 
which conceived the Academy was bounded by no 
narrow limitations, but intended to offer to the stu- 
dents therein opportunities for the very broadest type 
of culture. The American School of Classical Studies 
in Rome was established by the Archaeological Institute 
of America at about the same time as the Academy. 
Recently these two institutions have been consoli- 
dated to the mutual advantage of each. The Classical 
School is a center not only for its own members, but 
also for all American scholars visiting Rome, it pos- 
sesses an already valuable library of seven thousand 
volumes and it offers to all who enter its doors almost 
unlimited opportunities for study and research, and the 
union of these two institutions cannot fail to be of in- 
estimable advantage to the students of each. For the 
present the Academy and the School occupy separate 
villas, but in the near future will be housed together in 
their permanent quarters on the Janiculuirr 

97 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

After its legal incorporation the Academy soon be- 
came very crowded in its quarters in the Villa dell' 
Aurora, and as no additions could be made to that 
building the Trustees began to look for new quarters. 
After a long and careful search the Villa Mirafiore on 
the Via Nomentana, just a mile beyond the Porta Pia, 
was purchased. This is a modern villa with extensive 
and beautiful grounds, containing a grove of ilex trees 
of unusual beauty even for the environs of Rome. In 
these grounds have been constructed studios for three 
painters and two sculptors in addition to the original 
buildings. The students also have tennis courts within 
the grounds and many beautiful spots for out-of-door 
study and recreation. 

When the Villa Mirafiore was purchased, the Trus- 
tees of the Academy thought that they had found 
what would be its permanent headquarters and were 
amply satisfied with that prospect, but an even better 
fate was in store for it. After her death, it was found 
that an American lady, who had long lived in Rome, 
a Mrs. Clara Hyland, had left her villa on Mount 
Janiculum, occupying the most splendid site in Rome, 
to the American Academy to be used as its permanent 
home. This villa is known as the Villa Aurelia, and 
part of it is of great antiquity, being a portion of the 

98 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 

great wall built by Aurelian seventeen hundred years 
ago for the purpose of keeping the barbarians out of 
Rome. Garibaldi occupied this villa as his headquar- 
ters when defending the Roman Republic against the 
French under General Oudinot. During the siege the 
buildings were almost destroyed and since then have 
been restored and not happily. The gardens, however, 
are of considerable extent and of exquisite beauty, and 
to-day the rebuilding of the villa on a scale commen- 
surate with its purpose and dignity has been begun. 
When these buildings are completed, the Academy 
will possess studios, libraries, an exhibition hall, and 
residences for directors and students, and the grounds 
are of sufficient size to accommodate these buildings 
with dignity. What makes Mrs. Hyland’s gift of such 
priceless value to the Academy and to America is its 
incomparable site, much the finest in the city. The 
views in every direction are superb. Off to the south 
lie the Alban Hills, to the east the Sabine Mountains, 
with distant views of the snowy Abruzzi in between. 
To the north, just beyond the gardens of Villa Au- 
relia itself, lies the Passeggiatta Marghenta, a charm- 
ing park that extends almost to St. Peter’s. The stu- 
dent at the Academy has only to cross this park to 
reach those priceless treasure-houses of the Christian 

99 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


world, and all the wonders of the V atican. T revelyan, 
in his story of “ Garibaldf s Defense of the Roman 
Republic/’ thus speaks of the spot from which in the 
near future will fly the Stars and Stripes, the emblem 
of our great Republic: — 

Ascending the heights of the Janiculum we look back across 
the Tiber at the city spread beneath our feet in all its mellow 
tints broken here and there by masses of dark green pine and 
cypress and by shining cupolas raised to the sun. There it lies, 
beneath us, the heart of Europe and the living chronicle of Man’s 
long march to civilization ; for there, we know, are the well pro' 
portioned piazzas with their ancient columns and their fountains 
splashing in shade and shine around the sculptured water gods ; 
the Forum won back by the spade and the first monument of 
the Christian conquest. There rise the naked hulks of giant 
ruins stripped of their imperial grandeur long ago by hungry 
generations of papal architects and there, on the outskirts of the 
town, is the pyramid that keeps watch over the graves. As we 
look down we feel in the presence of all the centuries of Euro' 
pean History, a score of civilizations dead and lying in state and, 
in the midst of their eternal monuments, mankind still swarms 
and labors, still intent to live, still weaving the remote future out 
of the immemorial past. And then, raising our eyes to the far 
horizon, we see those hills of great name, molded by the chance 
spasms of volcanoes, leaving against the sky ridges and peaks to 
which in after days, Consuls, Ernperors and Popes looked every 
morning as on familiar faces. There, to the north, is the spire of 
Soracte,to the east, grey, gaunt Lucretilia, to the south the Alban 
Mount itself, the presiding genius of the city. Across the fifteen 


l oo 


THE AMERICAN ACADEMY AT ROME 


miles that lie between the capital and this great semicircle of 
sacred hills rolls, sea-like, the Campagna in waves of bare open 
country. Over it, from the day when Consul Aulus led out his 
host to the Porcian heights yonder, to the day when Italy entered 
Rome under Victor Emanuel, the armies of many nations, in 
many ages, for many causes, have come and gone, and each 
could have been seen slowly crawling over the vast plain. In 
solemn hush of the distance, it seems as if that semicircle of 
mountains were the seats of an antique theatre whereon some 
audience of patient gods were watching an endless play, as if 
Rome were the stage on which their looks were centered and 
on which the short-lived actors moved. 

Is it not an inspiring thought that on such a site the 
American Academy may through ages to come teach 
lessons as immortal as Rome itself and learn from the 
Eternal City those fundamental principles upon which 
all art must stand ? This was the dream which Me- 
Kim dreamed and for which he worked unceasingly 
until his health broke down so completely that he was 
prevented from doing any further active work. After 
the first great subscriptions to the endowment fund 
had been made, for several years nothing further in 
the way of large gifts could be secured. McKim's en- 
thusiasm was greatly missed, but his death, which sad- 
dened all of his own profession, brought vividly to the 
minds of his brother architects as well as to his personal 
friends the memory of all for which his life had stood, 


1 01 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

of his unselfishness, and his abiding faith in the future 
in America for the profession he so loved. A movement 
was started to raise a memorial to him, and it was felt 
that nothing else would be so fitting or so pleasing to 
him as another subscription of one hundred thousand 
dollars to the funds of the Academy. The call for this 
subscription met with instant response from all s ec' 
tions of the country and the fund was soon secured. 
Upon the reading of his will, it was found that he had 
carried his love for the Academy even beyond the 
grave, for, fearing lest the project for which he had so 
unceasingly labored and which he had so deeply loved 
might suffer for lack of money, he had left his entire 
fortune of a quarter of a million dollars to the Amerfi 
can Academy subject only to his daughters receiving 
the income during her lifetime, thus showing how 
dearly he held this project in his heart. When the 
Academy is moved into its permanent quarters on the 
Mons Janiculum, the sale of the Villa Mirafiore will 
add another large sum to the Endowment Fund, so 
that its future is now assured, and its influence and 
power will increase with the years, and to all time it 
will be a living monument to the genius, generosity, 
and tact of Charles McfCim. 


CHAPTER IX 


McKIM THE MAN 

Thus far in this memoir we have been considering 
the life and influence of McKim the Architect. To 
adequately express McKim the Man is a far more 
difficult matter. To those who knew and loved him, 
the man was a far greater influence than his work. 
Even slight acquaintances realized this because of the 
subtle power of his personality. His whole life has 
been best described in one trenchant sentence of his 
only surviving partner, Mr. Mead, which I have quoted 
on the title-page of this book, “Perfection in whatever 
he undertook.” That he never got far away from the 
atmosphere of his early home and the teachings of his 
beautiful mother, I have already tried to show. His 
was a life crowned with outward successes and filled 
with honors, and yet it was a life far from free of care 
and sorrow. It seems no man of pure ideals can escape 
from suffering: — - 

Is it true, Oh ! Christ in Heaven, 

That the highest suffer most ? 

That the strongest wander farthest? 

l 03 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


And most hopelessly are lost ? 

That the mark of rank in nature 
Is capacity for pain, 

And the anguish of the singer 

Makes the music of the strain ? 

The McICim of his later days, handsome, reserved, 
dignified, full of reposeful charm, the McKim whom 
the younger men of his profession only met to revere 
and love, was the product of a life of rigid discipline, 
strenuous work, and constant self-denial. In his youth 
he bubbled over with fun and animal spirits. As he 
grew older, these same spirits were curbed and held in 
check by an invincible will and a mind of very lofty 
purity and became the tools by which he achieved his 
highest successes. His sense of fun and of the joy of 
life he never lost. Mr. Robert Peabody, of Boston, 
one of his close friends and confreres, said of him after 
his death: — 

It does not seem so very long ago that there came into our 
little circle of architectural studies in Paris a charming youth, 
fresh from Cambridge from the Scientific School and the balk 
field a merry, cheerful friend, an athlete, a serious student. We 
lived a simple, frugal life in the splendid Paris of Louis Napoleon, 
working hard and he especially with a dogged earnestness. There 
were, however, happy interludes in this working life between 
charrettes, when, on rare occasions ice formed on the lakes in the 
Bois, he, a perfect skater, was the center of admiring throngs. 


l 04 


McKIM THE MAN 


When in the Luxembourg Gardens beneath our windows, we 
passed around an American base/ball, the Parisians lined up three 
deep at the tennis court to see him throw the ball to incredible 
heights. Fired by his enthusiasm, we even joined gymnasium 
classes, and, though that now seems improbable, we became pro/ 
ficient on the flying trapeze. In summer we rowed on the Seine 
and in the ever/to/be/remembered trip for several days down 
that river no one, French or American, joined with greater 
enthusiasm than the comrade we used to call affectionately 
“Follen” or the Frenchmen — by some unrecognizable pervert 
sion of the name so hard for French lips — McKim. 

In view of his later career it doubtless sounds strange to say 
that for a long time it was harder for McKim than for most for/ 
eigners to find himself in sympathy with the atelier and the 
Ecole des Beaux Arts. What little experience he brought with 
him had been obtained with Mr. Russell Sturgis of New York. 
That master and Mr. Babb were his ultimate arbiters. Mr. Rus/ 
kin was the prophet of all that was good and true in Art. Plunged 
into a world that did not know these masters, even by name, and 
that looked on Victorian Gothic as romantic archeology, but in 
no possible sense as architecture, McKim’s inflexible nature had 
some hard rebuffs and conflicts. It required time and other in/ 
fluences to bring him to a sense of the great worth of the under/ 
lying principles of the Parisian training, but his sympathies were 
always more with the earlier than the later French masters. He 
never really liked modern French taste and he was, in fact, more 
close to Rome than to Paris. 

Often the active and feverish life that is creating a Renais/ 
sance of Art in New York to,day makes us think of the brib 
liant periods of that other Renaissance in Tuscany. I would not 
claim for McKim the character of universal genius which his/ 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


tory attributes to many of the early sons of the Italian Renais/ 
sance, but when we read how Alberti, that fore-runner of Leo- 
nardo, was skilled in arms and horsemanship and all the bodily 
exercises proper to the estate of a young nobleman — that he en- 
joyed feats of strength and skill, that he possessed a singularly 
sweet temper and graceful conversation, that for music he had a 
genius of the highest order — we are reminded of our friend. 
Still more, when we find this accomplished son of the Renais- 
sance fusing classic art with mediaeval standards of taste and in- 
troducing Roman arches and Corinthian pilasters to a world that 
had long forgotten them, we are again brought back to New 
York. These two artists were alike even in the principles that 
guided their art. They did not seek an “ architecture raisonee.” 
They were not greatly interested in Logic. They sought beauty. 
They found it in its most perfect forms in classic art and they 
each applied it to the structures of their day. It is enough for 
most of us that their art was beautiful, and we find ourselves de- 
bating whether our friend and his associates were more charm- 
ing in their earlier work when in the Herald Building and the 
Century Club they dealt with the loveliness of the early Renais- 
sance, or when the noonday splendors of the great Roman orders 
appeared at Columbia College and the Pennsylvania Railroad Sta- 
tion and rivaled not only the Renaissance but ancient Rome itself. 

In all of this, however, we see McKim, as in the case of Al- 
berti, the handsome gentleman, the cultured scholar making his 
city beautiful and adapting the beauties of classic architecture to 
the life of his day. 

So perfectly has Mr. Peabody brought before us 
the man as he actually was that anything more I may 
say must seem like an anti-climax. A man is always 

1 06 


McKIM THE MAN 


judged by his friends, and no man had a richer supply 
of loyal friends among the choicest spirits of his day 
than Charles McKim. I have quoted Mr. Choate and 
Senator Root and Mr. Cadwalader and President Nich- 
olas Murray Butler as among that number, but there 
were many others of equal distinction, to say nothing 
of those closer friends of his life, his partners, who were 
more than brothers. A chapter might be written of 
his friendship with Augustus Samt-Gaudens, the great 
sculptor, who was so often the companion of his travels 
and with whom he worked in closest sympathy until 
the death of Saint-Gaudens ended their earthly com- 
panionship. McKim did not linger long after, and one 
likes to think of these two rare souls walking the Ely- 
sian Fields arm in arm and carrying on above the same 
wonderful talks about, those things which are true and 
earnest and beautiful, as they had done on earth. Aside 
from men of his own social circle there lay a much 
larger circle of friendships and these were perhaps the 
rarest of his life, that large, very large number of 
draughtsmen, students and younger practitioners who 
looked upon McKim, as long as he lived, as ‘‘guide, 
counselor, and friend,” and who since his death hold his 
memory in sacred veneration and treasure most deeply 
everything they learned from him. 

i 07 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

Among his friends of his own age McKim was aL 
ways the genial, urbane gentleman, but the natural 
reserve of his temperament, which seemed to increase 
with the years, made his conversation even among inti- 
mates somewhat formal and dignified. With younger 
men he was able to throw off this reserve, to accept and 
enter into their point of view. He never forgot the 
dreams and struggles of his own youth and so was 
ever ready to give himself to help younger architects 
to arrive. Without apparently seeming to do so he 
watched the development of each man in his office who 
had shown any possibilities of creative work, and when 
he felt that this one or that had reached the point where 
he could develop more rapidly in personal practice it 
was McKim’s custom to secure for this man some job 
and thus enable him to start out for himself. It would 
be difficult to recall the exact number of successful 
practicing architects who were thus launched through 
his kindly and sympathetic influences. This unselfish 
practice has been the invariable rule of McKim, Mead, 
and White, and is carried on just as extensively to-day 
by Mr. Mead and his associates. 

McKim may almost be said to have had no private 
life. At the age of twenty-five he married Miss Bige- 
low, of Boston. That marriage was not a happy one, 

1 08 



RESIDENCE OF JOHN INNES KANE, ESCK, FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



McKIM THE MAN 

and they were later divorced without any breath of 
scandal being attached to either. Of this marriage there 
was one daughter — Miss Margaret McKim — who 
was her father’s companion during the later years of 
his life. On June 25, 1885, he married Miss Julia 
Amory Appleton, of Lenox. This marriage gave every 
promise of most complete happiness to both, but was 
only short-lived owing to the death of Mrs. McKim in 
1887. In her memory he founded the Julia Amory 
Appleton Fellowship in Architecture at Harvard, 
which provides an annual stipend of one thousand dol- 
lars for a traveling student. He also may be said to 
have had no fixed abiding-place. He budded for his 
friends many beautiful houses, of which the most beau- 
tiful in my judgment is the Kane house on the north- 
west corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, 
New York, but, like the cobbler of old, he never had 
time to build a home for himself. 

In reviewing all that has been written of him and 
in listening to countless anecdotes from his intimate 
friends, I have come to the conclusion that McKim 
never had time to do anything for his own personal 
advancement or gratification. Perhaps that is the secret 
of real success in life; he lived and worked for others, 
and in that fact lies the foundation of his radiating 

1 09 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

charm. Most men leave behind them letters out of 
which their biographers can easily weave an interest' 
ing story of their lives, but McKim hated to write 
letters. He might be said to have had the telegraph 
habit, so constantly did he use the wire even when 
to do so was almost a luxury, but unfortunately tele' 
grams are seldom if ever kept. 

I have spoken in the beginning of what to me are 
his greatest characteristics: his modesty and his enthu' 
siasm for helping young men to develop in the profeS' 
sion of architecture. The keenest and finest analysis 
that has been made of the man and the architect was 
made by Mr. Choate on the occasion of the Memorial 
Services in New York from which I have permission 
to quote. I have told of the difficulty of locating him 
at the great dinner in Washington when it seemed as 
if all the talent in America were gathered together to 
do him honor. Mr. Choate gives a graphic account of 
the occasion in London in 1 903 when he received the 
Royal Gold Medal for services to architecture the 
world over. He was so nervously diffident and env 
barrassed that he begged Mr. Choate and Mr. Henry 
White to go with him and stand by him through 
what he considered a terrible ordeal. When he re' 
ceived the medal, he accepted it, not as an honor to 


1 1 o 


McKIM THE MAN 

himself personally, but as an honor to his profession 
in America of which he proudly considered him- 
self to be only the representative. Not only in Eng- 
land, but in Italy also, the highest authorities in Art 
have distinguished him with special honors. To us, in 
America, this seems most fitting, for surely it is to 
McKim, Mead, and White that America is indebted 
for her knowledge of the principles of Italian art and 
architecture and the knowledge that these principles 
are not national but fundamental and apply to all 
architecture. 

In America, particularly, in his own profession, he 
was not only honored; he was loved. The number of 
young men who derived the foundations of knowl- 
edge in the office of McKim, Mead, and White is 
legion, and they carry into actual work the inspiration 
and influence of McKim’s large imagination, his con- 
stant encouragement, his abiding faith in the purity 
and strength of an ideal, and his deeply rooted love 
for and belief in beauty as an essential in life. Unlike 
those geniuses of the Renaissance, McKim did not 
scatter his energies, but by the closest study and hard- 
est work he concentrated his whole heart and mind and 
feeling upon his work as an architect. The crown of 
architecture was for him sufficient; he sought no other 


1 1 1 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

and to win this one he gave his life's blood. “ As some 
men have the vision of their country rich and pros^ 
perous, and some men the vision of their country great 
and powerful, his imagination kept always before him 
the vision of a country inspired and elevated by a 
purer and nobler taste; and, unselfishly and with em 
thusiasm, with persistency and high and noble courage, 
he devoted himself to that work ” ; these words are 
Mr. Root’s, but their truth is evident to all who have 
studied the life I am trying to portray. Behind that 
gentle, ingratiating manner, which he showed to all 
who came in contact with him, lay an absolutely im 
flexible will. When he seemed most about to sm> 
render and to yield to opposition, he was always found 
to be most determined, most immovable. Disliking 
conflict of any sort, he never could yield in what 
he believed to be best for the future of art, but 
he was never aggressive in his determination and 
never appeared to realize the victory when he had 
won it. 

McKim retired from the presidency of the Amer^ 
ican Institute of Architects in November, 1 903. Dur^ 
ing the two years of his presidency he had been much 
in Washington working with unwearying tact and 
zeal to impress upon Senators and Representatives 


McKIM THE MAN 


the importance of literally carrying out the reconv 
mendations of the Park Commission in order that the 
plans of L’Enfant and Washington might be pre- 
served. In his last address to the Convention of the 
Institute he dwells upon the necessity for constant ef- 
fort on the part of the Institute until this great plan 
should be completed, and here I make one quotation 
from his speech because it shows so clearly his whole 
method of procedure in dealing with bodies of men 
who did not in the beginning understand him or his 
ideals : — 

Bearing in mind this great volume of work the [ Park Com' 
mission Plan] and the intimate relations that have for so many 
years been maintained between our profession and the central 
government, it should be by no means a cause of astonishment that 
from time to time a difference of opinion should arise as to the 
exact form that these relations should assume. We should not feel 
that representatives of governments, zealous in what they consider 
wise economies, are inimical to those principles that we regard as 
fundamental. Yet we must bear in mind that there are times 
when right relations are to be maintained only by the greatest 
tact and moderation. 

If, as some fear, such times are upon us now, it behooves us to 
meet each situation as it arises fairly, calmly and above all, without 
heat, remembering that nothing is to be gained by mere assertion, 
everything by convincing proof ; remembering that we have lair 
minded men to deal with, but men who can look at things from our 
point of view only when they have been convinced that that point 


113 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

of view is right and for the good of all. We must approach them 
in a spirit of the highest consideration, prepared to yield every' 
thing except principle. 

It was this quality more than any other which made 
out of his clients warm personal friends. So many 
anecdotes have been told me, full of the personality 
and charm, the purity and integrity, of the man, that 
it is hard to select among them those which most viv- 
idly portray him. Such personalities are rare in any 
profession, in any nation, and the main object in the 
writing of this memoir is to bring before the younger 
men in his profession, who were born too late to have 
known him personally, but have seen and are seeing 
the distinguished work which has been and is being 
done by the firm which he founded to carry on the 
great tradition of a noble architecture, a knowledge of 
the man himself who lived and died to establish this 
tradition in America. The last few years of McKim's 
life were clouded by sickness and sorrow. Saint-Gam 
dens and White preceded him, and he never quite 
recovered from their loss, but he fought bravely on 
against serious physical disability planning, directing, 
and encouraging until the end. As a last picture 
of him I want to quote from his lifelong friend Mr. 
John L. Cadwalader: — 

1 14 


McKIM THE MAN 


And now what shall be said of the personality of Charles 
Mc'Kim? With my relationship with him for years and years, 1 
am unable, almost unable, to enter upon that subject. It seemed 
to me he was almost the most attractive personality I have ever 
known. I defy any man to attempt to oppose McKim when he 
was really disposing of some subject in which he was largely in' 
terested. His manner, his smile, his treatment of the subject 
were all conclusive, and I defy any man to fail to enlist when 
McKim was the recruiting officer. 

In the sunshine of his presence, acquaintance warmly bios' 
somed into friendship. Jn the charm and shadow of his smile 
a statement became a demonstration, difficulties passed away, 
things that were uncertain took a certain shape and became pos' 
sible and natural and imagination became actuality. 

He really burned out life’s candle in the effort to elevate his 
own profession. He has passed away. That timid fluttering soul 
has ceased to beat against the bars of life. His body is at rest, and 
yet we know — 

The soul of Adonais, like a star 
Beacons from above where the Eternal are. 


CHAPTER X 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 

After an illness which really lasted for nearly three 
years, Charles McKim died on the 1 4th of September, 
1909. So widespread was the grief felt, not only 
among his own immediate circle, but also by the 
American people at large, that the New York Chapter 
of American Institute of Architects and the various 
societies of which he was an honored member deter' 
mined to hold a memorial meeting in his honor in the 
city of New York. The national body of the Amer- 
ican Institute, while in thorough sympathy with the 
New York movement, felt that some recognition of 
his services to the nation should also be held in the 
National Capital which had been the scene of so much 
of his splendid work. The meeting in New York was 
held in the New Theatre on Central Park West on 
November 23,1909. At this meeting appropriate ad- 
dresses were made by Mr. George B. Post on behalf 
of the New York Chapter, by Honorable Elihu Root, 
Mr. Walter Cook, Professor H. Langford Warren, 
Mr. Josiah H. Benton, President Nicholas Murray 

1 1 6 



Charles Follen McKim 










, 

' 

















THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 

Butler, Mr. John L. Cadwalader, and Professor WiL 
liam M. Sloane. The music at this meeting was fur' 
nished by the Mendelssohn Glee Club, of which Mr. 
McKim had been an enthusiastic member. From 
some of the addresses at this meeting I have already 
quoted so extensively that I will not report them in 
full, but the others are of great interest and show how 
highly esteemed and how deeply loved was McKim 
in his own city and are reported just as they were 
delivered. 

REMARKS OF MR. GEORGE B. POST 

The members of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Na' 
tional Academy of Design, the American Academy in Rome, the 
New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, the 
Faculty of Fine Arts of Columbia University, the American Acad' 
emy of Arts and Letters, the National Institute of Arts and 
Letters, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science, the Me' 
Dowell Association, the Municipal Art Society, the National 
Sculpture Society, the National Society of Mural Painters, the 
Society of Beaux Arts Architects, and the Architectural League 
of New York, have called this meeting in honor of the late 
Charles Follen McKim. Were it not that I am to have the honor 
of introducing distinguished orators, far better qualified than I 
to speak of his character and career, I might well tell you how, 
by distinguished ability, great attainments, sterling worth, sin' 
gular and insistent devotion to whatever he undertook, enthu' 
siasm for the good and beautiful and hatred of sham, combined 


1 1 7 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


with a courteous consideration for all, he has won the devoted 
affection of his fellows and a dominating influence in the profess 
sion which he loved. He won the respectful admiration of the 
community; his genius has stamped an imprint on the art of a 
continent. He was a Master of Arts of Bowdoin and Harvard 
Universities, Doctor of Letters of Columbia University, Doctor 
of Laws of the Pennsylvania University, National Academician, 
Member ot the Academy di San Lucca of Rome, twice President 
of the American Institute of Architects, and Honorary Member 
of the Royal Institute of British Architects, whose gold medal he 
has received. He was an early member of and deeply interested in 
the Mendelssohn Glee Club, and it is very appropriate that the 
Club should open these ceremonies by a song. 

ADDRESS BY MR. WALTER H. COOK 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

On Sir Christopher Wren’s tomb in St. Paul’s there is a Latin 
inscription, to which Mr. Choate has referred, which says, “ If you 
seek his monument, look about you”; and we may well repeat 
these words when we think about Charles McKim. It is useless 
to enumerate all the buildings, in this city and elsewhere, which 
bear witness to his talent, his almost unerring taste and his loving 
care. And it is one of the rewards which his and my profession 
offers, that when we are gone, our monuments, whether they be 
great and imposing structures or not, stand in the great open-air 
museum of city or country, to be seen by all men, and not shut 
up in galleries. “If you seek his monument, look about you.” 

All this production of a most active career he has left as a herit' 
age to his country; but more especially is it the heritage of the 
architects who follow him. To them it is a very precious one; 

118 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 


for with these examples before us, we cannot fail to approach our 
work with something of the love and devotion to the beautiful 
which he possessed in so high a degree. And in thinking over 
the names of those who have gone before him in our time- 
Richardson and Hunt and the others — it seems to me that no 
one of them has left a stronger and more definite message to 
their successors than our friend in whose honor we are gathered 
here tO/day. 

In all the arts, and especially in the arts of the present time, 
there is such a striving for the individual note, for a different 
mode of expression than any one else has used a different lan- 
guage I might say — that this desire threatens sometimes to de' 
stroy all other impulses. Let us at least be different, is the cry, 
though we may not be beautiful. 

Architecture, in common with the other arts, has suffered from 
this malady. But we in this country, have not been the worst 
offenders ; and that we have not been so, I think is due more to 
the influence of McKim than to any other cause. 

I have followed his work from the beginning to the end; and 
ever since those little cottages at Elberon,at the beginning of his 
career — such wonderful contrast to the work we know him 
best by — one guiding principle was always his. He, too, sought 
as earnestly as the rest of us for individuality ; and when 1 think 
how easy it is to recognize his hand, I cannot but think that he 
has attained it. But above all was his unwritten law — never, in 
the name of originality or with an ambition to be hailed as 
a daring innovator, to create anything which did not primarily 
appeal to him as beautiful. 

From this he never swerved an instant. And I believe that this 
loyalty to a pure and unselfish ideal will live as an example, as a 
good tradition among us long after his generation has disap' 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


peared ; and that Me Kim dead will preserve us from as many 
monstrous and grotesque creations as McKim living did. 

As a kind and generous friend to all of us, his fellow'workers, 
it is needless for me to speak to you of him. I knew him when he 
was at Harvard, 1 knew him when he was studying his art in Paris 
and was full of that generous enthusiasm which never failed him, 
and I knew him during the whole of his brilliant career in this 
country. And it is hard for me to think that I shall look into his 
kind eyes no more. 

REMARKS OF PROFESSOR H. LANGFORD WARREN 

OF HARVARD 

Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

Harvard University gladly joins in doing honor to the menv 
mory of Charles Follen McKim. Mr. McKim’s relations to the 
University were close. He had been a student in the Lawrence 
Scientific School in 1866-67, and, though his residence was so 
short, he always looked back to that period with pleasure and 
thought of Harvard as his alma mater. His brilliant career as an 
architect, reaching as he did the position of recognized leader of 
his profession, led the University in 1890 to give him the honor' 
ary degree of Master of Arts. 

The University is fortunate in havingfrom his design three im' 
portant structures, the Harvard Union and Robinson Hall, built 
for the Department of Architecture, both completed in 1901, 
and the Foot'Ball Stadium on Soldier’s Field. But the general as' 
pect of the university buildings in Cambridge has been more pro' 
foundly affected by the noble fence and series of gates which he 
designed and which, built from year to year by different college 
classes, are still incomplete. 


120 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 


His interest in the Department ot Architecture was always 
keen. He followed his work sympathetically and in 1904 founded 
in honor of his wife the Julia Amory Appleton Fellowship in Ar' 
chitecture, which provides an annual stipend of one thousand dob 
lars for a traveling student. But his interest in architectural edu' 
cation, which had led him also to endow a similar fellowship at 
Columbia, was chiefly shown in his being the virtual founder of 
the American Academy in Rome, in which the university has 
been greatly interested, which has been the home of its travel' 
ing fellows in architecture, and which may justly be regarded as 
the culminating school of the American system of architectural 
education. 

Harvard University, therefore, has special reasons tor grateful 
recognition of Mr. McKim. But the University desires chiefly to 
join in honoring his memory as that of a great artist, whose spleii' 
did work has done more perhaps than that of any other Ameri' 
can architect to raise the standard of taste throughout the country. 


REMARKS OF MR. JOSIAH H. BENTON 

The City of Boston owes its beautiful Public Library building 
to the wisdom and the courage of a board of trustees who 
sought the best architect without reference to where he lived. 
This building was the first important public building designed 
and constructed by McKim, Mead, and White. It was the first 
building in the United States designed as a complete work of art, 
combining architecture, sculptural decorations, and mural paint' 
ing. As such it certainly ranks among the first, and we believe 
is the first, of the inimitable creations of the great architect 
Charles F. McKim. 

Like many great works of art, its proportion, its outlines, 


l 2 1 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

and its color are so harmonious and perfect that it does not pro' 
duce its effect at the first view. The people of Boston received it 
with the cautious hesitation with which they receive most things, 
but as they have lived with it and come to know it, they appre' 
ciate its rare beauty more and more. It is the finest ornament of 
our beautiful city, and our people are more and more proud of 
it as the years go by. 


ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR WILLIAM M. SLOANE 
Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

It has been my duty to compress into a few short resolutions 
something of what has been expressed here so ably and so briF 
liantly. 

Fourteen associations, artistic, technical, and literary, here 
unite to commemorate the distinction of Charles Follen McKim 
as a citizen, as a craftsman, as an artist. To this end they join in 
recording these convictions. 

His life was an example of that which a creative architect 
must imperatively choose. His secondary training completed, he 
devoted ten years to his professional education ; five to that of 
discipline, five to that of knowledge. He was stimulated to great 
thoughts, and he had acquired the power to express them. 

His genius was exhibited in his supreme power of collabora" 
tion; he linked his work and fame inseparably with those of his 
two original partners, primarily for the sake of comprehensive 
mastery, but this incidently for the perfecting of achievement of 
each singly as well as by all in combination. 

By such means were attracted a great body of important clients, 
individual, corporate, and national; among these he easily com' 
manded a leadership which they as readily accepted, and from its 


1 22 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 


consequences he never shrank, assuming responsibility to any 
extent for design, procedure, and results. 

His choice of style was predetermined by ancestry, temper' 
ament, and training, for his soul was akin to that highest form of 
civilization which is marked by dignity, repose and proportion. 
As the great painter elaborates on the basis of strong drawing, 
whether of brush or pencil, so this great architect imagined and 
used structure that was itself poetic, the degree of elaboration and 
ornament being determined by adaptation to use and environ' 
ment. 

To the ancillary arts of the engineer, the painter, and the sculp' 
tor his indebtedness was freely acknowledged, and their splendors 
are nowhere more manifest than in the buildings of his firm, be' 
cause of the opportunity there afforded and the zeal they there 
exhibited to be parts of an harmonious whole. 

His work, like that of all true artists, was the expression of his 
manhood. His character was strong as it was pure; his disposi' 
tion affectionate and self'sacriticing ; his mind vigorous, helpful, 
and noble. He was a lover of his kind, discerning reality behind 
the ideals of his fellow Americans, intolerant only of pose and 
sham. Because of his strong and courageous heart he was genial 
but modest, joyous, even gay, and gentle. 

There is no perfection in humanity, but the nearest approach 
to it in a man is discernment of tendencies, emancipation of up' 
lifting qualities, and the interpretation of a community to itself. 
Holding this as a self-evident truth, we are firmly convinced that 
the loving and grateful memory in which his generation holds 
him, that the beneficent institutions which he founded or vivi' 
fied ; that the structures, public and private alike, which he de' 
signed and built and which testify to the aspirations of an epoch, 
— that these all bear witness that as man, citizen, and artist there 


123 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

is the highest fame, permanent and deserved, for Charles Fob 
len McKim. 

The meeting in Washington was held in the Coi> 
coran Gallery of Art during the Convention of the 
American Institute of Architects, on the evening of 
December 15,1 909. This meeting was distinctly na- 
tional in character and was attended by the President 
of the United States, members of his Cabinet, Senators 
and Representatives, foreign ambassadors, and distin- 
guished literary and professional men from various 
parts of the country, as well as by his brother practi- 
tioners from every Chapter of the American Insti- 
tute. Mr. Cass Gilbert, of New York, who was at 
that time President of the Institute, presided at this 
meeting, introducing each of the speakers. Addresses 
were made by William H. Taft, President of the 
United States; Elihu Root, Senator from New York; 
Joseph H. Choate, former Ambassador to Great Britain; 
Cass Gilbert, President of the American Institute of 
Architects; William Rutherford Mead, President of 
the American Academy at Rome. Tributes of respect 
were read from the National Academy of Art, the 
American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National 
Institute of Arts and Letters, Joint Action of fourteen 
New York Societies, the National Academy of De- 


1 24 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 

sign, the National Sculpture Society, the National So- 
ciety of Mural Painters, the Architectural League of 
New York, Harvard University, Columbia Uni- 
versity, the American Academy in Rome. 

At this meeting the Gold Medal which had been 
awarded to Mr. McKim by the American Institute for 
distinguished services to the profession was received by 
Mr. Mead and by him presented to Miss Margaret 
McKim, the great architect's daughter. With the 
exception of the address of Mr. Root, which has been 
incorporated in the text of this memoir, the addresses 
and tributes are here printed in full. 


WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, PRESIDENT OF THE 
UNITED STATES 

Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

We are here to d o honor to the memory of an American leader in 
one of the great arts. I do not feel justified in saying much with 
respect to Mr. McKim, for the reason that the period of my ac' 
quaintance with him and friendship for him was very short. My 
acquaintance with him arose from the fact that I was Secretary 
of War, and had to do with that plan in an official way, which he 
held most dear, I think, of all the subjects to which he devoted 
his great artistic genius — the plan for carrying onward the design 
with respect to Washington. He was sensitive, as I presume most 
geniuses and men of talent are, and he suffered much as he ran 
against that abruptness and cocksureness that we are apt to find 

125 


CHARLES FOLLEN McfCIM 


in the neighborhood of Washington, both in the Executive and 
the Legislative branches. He was the last person to give you the 
impression that he had either abruptness or cocksureness, but 1 
don’t know anyone who, when he had set his mind at a thing and 
had determined to reach a result, had more steadfastness and 
manifested more willingness to use every possible means to 
achieve his purpose than Mr. McKim. 

I don’t know whether J dare tell you a story with reference to 
him, which as a member of the Cabinet, I am able to certify is true ; 
but it illustrates his qualities to such a degree that perhaps I may 
be pardoned for going into the confidences of a Cabinet of an 
administration. 

The Mall was Mr. McKim’s chief anxiety lest Congress should 
forget that important part of the plan of the improvement of 
Washington. The cellar and the foundation for the Agricultural 
Department Building had been begun, and some eight or ten 
thousand dollars expended when it came to Mr. McKim’s knowb 
edge that the building if erected according to that plan, would be 
a few feet too high and a few feet too near the center, and he came 
to prevent it. The Secretary of Agriculture was not disposed to 
regard that variation from the plan as substantial, and was very 
much opposed to the change. 

Mr. McKim came to me, after Mr. Root left the Cabinet, as his 
only true sympathizer and friend, and asked me to speak to the 
President, whom he also regarded as a friend and sympathizer, but 
one who at times needed convincing. So I went to see the Fresh 
dent and explained to him the situation, and he at once agreed 
that we ought to change it. “ But,” said he, “the trouble is with 
Uncle Jimmy, who has a real cause for complaint. He says that 
these architects have delayed too long, and the public money 
cannot be wasted and expended in this way.” 

126 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 


“ Well,” said I, “ can’t we call a council, or something of that 
sort, and solemnly sit on the subject, and then finally reach the 
right conclusion.” 

He said, “ We can, and we will,” and we did. Mr. McKim was 
of counsel and Mr. Green and two or three others. The President 
took Mr. McKim to task at once at the audacity of the architects 
who wait 30 or 60 days, until plans have been completed, and then 
come in and attempt to make a change. Well, that was not a very 
good beginning, and I am afraid that our brother McKim thought 
the jig was up. But it so suited the Secretary of Agriculture that 
when there appeared a suggestion from an engineer that pos' 
sibly not ten or five thousand dollars would be sacrificed, but 
an economy might be introduced in another way, the Secretary, 
at the suggestion or the invitation of the President, said that he 
thought possibly it might be worked out that way, but the Presb 
dent insisted that if we did, we did not intend to waive the crith 
cism that we would make against the profession of architects by 
reason of their delay. And so we separated. 

The Agricultural Building was moved. McKim and 1 walked 
up the steps of the War Department. I said “ Mr. McKim, I com 
gratulate you on your victory.” He turned and looked at me a 
moment, and said “Was it a victory? Another such and I am 
dead.” But it was a victory, and it illustrates his character in 
quietly pushing and pushing for the highest ideals of his art, and 
insisting on everything that was best, and in yielding in nothing 
that seemed to him a detriment and a retrograde step. 

No one could come in contact with him and not feel that geiv 
erous, disinterested spirit of his in favor of the promotion of all 
art, and his willingness to devote time and effort to promote it 
everywhere. 

I had the honor to appoint him as a member of the Board to 

127 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


assist the Secretary of War in preserving what he could of the 
scenery of Niagara, and he devoted a great deal of time, with 
very little compensation, to planning out what could be done on 
the American side of the river so that the people on the other 
side should not think it was the back yard of the United States. 
And so it was with respect to everything that came out of his 
character to one who had to deal with him in public matters. 

I did not come here to make a speech. I hoped that I should 
not be thrown on to the audience without some leader like Mr. 
Root or Mr. Choate, who have known Mr. McKim so long, and 
who have shown by their works and their speeches how much 
more artistic they are than I who have had no experience in art, 
until I came here to be made responsible for a great department, 
should begin this encomium ; but I feel in my heart so strongly 
the debt of gratitude that the nation owes to Mr. McKim for 
leading an art and making the ideals of that art even higher, and 
trying to make them national, that I am glad to lend any empha/ 
sis that I may to a memorial to him. 

I am living in a house to'day that has been made beautiful by 
Mr. McKim. It is a house to which you can invite any foreigner 
from any country, however artistic, and feel that it is a worthy 
Executive Mansion for a great nation like this, combining dig/ 
nity and simplicity, and reflecting in all its lines (it does to me) 
the dignity and simplicity of the art of Mr. McKim. 


JOSEPH H. CHOATE, EX- AMBASSADOR TO 
GREAT BRITAIN 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

This splendid audience of men, and especially of women, is in 
itself a noble tribute to the character and memory of Mr. Me/ 

128 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 


Kim. It is not to be put to too severe a test, however, and I shall 
content myself almost with saying ditto to what has already been 
said by the President and Mr. Root. 1 cannot bear the idea of keep' 
ing so many ladies standing longer. 

I come here as a lifelong personal friend of Mr.McKim,who 
knew him from his boyhood up, to bear testimony to his wonder' 
ful virtues and merits and the signal beauty of his character. I 
have hardly ever known in human form a personality more 
charming, more fascinating than his. Whether it was the Quaker 
discipline under which his early days were passed, the strict hard' 
ships which he underwent, the spur of necessity that drove him 
on, his innate love of perfect form and beauty, his innate hatred 
of all that was hideous and ugly; there was a sweet reasonableness 
about him always and everywhere; there seemed to be always 
accompanying him, flowing out from his person, a charming hu' 
inanity which warmly attached to him all who came in contact 
with him. I do not believe it was possible to know Charles Me' 
Kim without loving him, or to have come in personal contact 
with him without admiring the wonderful features of his char' 
acter. One single trait that he had was absolute loyalty in his 
friendships. And let me give you a single illustration of that, be/ 
cause it was so conspicuous and lifedong and made such an irn' 
pression in the community in which the three lived, that I must 
refer to the personal ties that bound together three great artists, 
three such brilliant geniuses as Charles McKim, Stanford White, 
and Augustus St.'Gaudens. They were always united, always to' 
gether, always in perfect sympathy, aiding each other, criticising 
each other, and all three inspired with the same ambition to ele' 
vate the noble arts to which they were devoted, and it was a ter' 
rible blow to the community and to the country when in the short 
space of three years, all three were taken from us. Let me remind 


129 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


you also of one other thing his absolute devotion and loyalty to 
the members of the great firm which he formed and which is 
likely to continue his work, to transmit his great repute and the 
impress of his genius for many years to come. He was such a 
guiding spirit among them, so prominent, so active, so recog' 
nized by the community, and yet from first to last, during the 
whole period of their organization, he would never permit any' 
thing to be known or recognized except as the work of the firm; 
no personal claims of his own, no putting forward of one in pre' 
ference to the other, and from beginning to end, as I believe, there 
never was a contract taken, there never was a piece of work corn' 
menced, except as the joint work of all three, which he insisted 
it should be from the beginning to the end. And then he was 
so modest withal. That was one of the most charming traits of 
his character beautiful in person, lofty in ideas, commanding 
in influence, he was as modest, sensitive, tender as any woman or 
child could possibly be. I might tell again what I told in New 
York, a personal experience of him, when he came to London to 
receive — what, if he had been living he would again receive here, 
the tribute of his whole profession - the gold medal of the British 
Institute of Architects, which was given to him in 1903. Why, 
he absolutely shrank from what he regarded as the terrible ordeal 
to which he was to be subjected in coming forward to receive 
that medal and say the few words of recognition and thanks that 
were expected of him. He was as modest as Washington when 
he appeared before the House of Burgesses on his return from his 
first successful military excursion into Western Virginia, and the 
Speaker, when he took his place among the Burgesses, said a few 
words of compliment to him. You remember that he rose tore' 
ply and was wholly unable to command words, and the Speaker 
said to him, “ Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty is only 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 


equaled by your merit, and that is such that no language can 
possibly do it justice.” So when Mr. McKim came, Mr. Henry 
White, whom 1 am happy to see here tomight, and myself being 
lifelong friends of his, he threw himself into our arms and said 
we must help him and carry him through this terrible ordeal. 
And we did stand by him. He appeared with most characteristic 
modesty and dignity; he received the medal; he accepted it not 
as a tribute to himself, but to the great profession in America 
that he was proud to represent, and then, when congratulations 
began to come to him from this side of the water, he replied by 
cable, “Many thanks, but I still wear the same hat.” Now, that 
was the beauty of him — no matter what happened, no matter 
what avalanches of praise and congratulations were heaped upon 
him, he always wore the same hat, his head never swelled in the 
face of tributes and honors and praises that might well have 
turned the heads of far more public men than he. 

I really do not feel at liberty longer to detain the audience. I 
merely came to say how much I loved him — to bear witness, 
as one of countless friends that he made wherever he went, to 
the dignity, the sweetness, and the beauty of his character.” 

CASS GILBERT, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN 
INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

This medal has been awarded to Charles Follen Me Rim for 
his distinguished services to the Arts, by the unanimous vote of 
the Convention of the American Institute of Architects. 

It is customary that on such an occasion the works and serv' 
ices of the man should he recounted and the basis of the award 
stated, with the reasons governing his selection. But in this im 

i 3 i 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 


stance, it is not necessary to add one word to what has already 
been said, nor to recount the list of the works in which he had 
a distinguished part, so well known and so imposing. 

His monuments in bronze and marble will long enrich his 
native land ; his benefactions, not measured alone in the stan' 
dards of commerce, have laid the sure foundations of even greater 
monuments in the hearts of his countrymen. But it is not for 
these alone that we offer this token of our praise and love. 

The award of this medal can add nothing to his honor. 
Titles, nor decorations, nor medals, nor any worldly thing can 
add to worth. Character and merit are intrinsic. They are not 
conferred. Nothing we can do or say can add to their sum. 

Patriotism, self sacrifice, patience, courage, achievement, are 
the evidences of greatness, and of these he gave full measure. 

Such a man needs no acclaim, but that our estimate of his life 
and works shall be known of men, and that thereby others be 
inspired in noble emulation ; that we may testify to the world 
that in this age and among this people the great ideals common 
to the race are held in honor, and in reverence this medal is 
awarded. 

Mr. Mead, it now becomes my duty, and my privilege, on be' 
half of the Institute, to deliver to you, his associate, coadjutor and 
friend, this token of the respect, love and honor in which we all 
held him. 


WILLIAM RUTHERFORD MEAD 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : — 

As the close friend and associate of Mr. McKim for thirty'five 
years, it is with a mingled feeling of sadness and pride that I stand 
here to'night to receive for him this medal. 

l 32 


THE TWO MEMORIAL MEETINGS 


Mr. Choate, who stood by Mr. McKim in London, when the 
medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects was conferred 
upon him, has told you of his feelings of diffidence, amounting 
almost to panic, on that occasion. 

Here at home, and among old friends, he would have felt the 
same diffidence and modesty in accepting this great honor. He 
would have expressed himself in a hesitating manner, somewhat 
as follows: “Whatever I have been able to accomplish in the 

field of architecture has been from devotion to a great art and 
in the interest of a noble profession. That my efforts have been 
recognized by this representative body of American architects is 
a reward which I shall always cherish.” 

I well remember when I told him a year ago, on one of his last 
visits to his office, that this medal had been voted to him, the de' 
preciating smile he gave, a smile expressing both modesty and 
pleasure. 

Such was the man — modestly sinking his own personality, 
but always strong for the best, not only in his own work, but for 
the profession of which he was such an honored member. 

Accepting the medal in his behalf, I shall place it in the hands 
of his daughter, who will preserve it as a precious memento of 
the regard in which her father was held by the American Instb 
tute of Architects which he served so faithfully. 

Resolutions expressive of the deep reverence in 
which he was held and the great grief felt because of 
his death were presented from : — 

The National Academy of Art; 

American Academy of Art; 

National Institute of Arts and Letters; 


1 33 


CHARLES FOLLEN McKIM 

United Action of New York Societies; 

National Society of Mural Painters; 

Architectural League of New York; 

National Academy of Design ; 

Harvard University; 

American Academy of Rome. 

These tributes from his confreres who revered and 
loved him, and from men of varied professions who 
admired him, tell his story and bring before us who 
follow him a vivid picture of the master. In thinking 
of him unconsciously there come to me, but with a 
very different association from the one in which they 
were written, those ringing words of Browning which 
so express the feeling of the younger men in his pro^ 
fession to Charles McKim: — 

“We that have loved him so, honored him, followed him, 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 

Learned his deep language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our motto to live with or die.” 


THE END 


APPENDIX 

























APPENDIX 


THE PRESENTATION OF THE ROYAL GOLD 
MEDAL TO MR. McKIM BY THE ROYAL INSTI- 
TUTE OF BRITISH ARCHITECTS 

The President’s Address 
Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

As you all know, we are met together tomight to present the 
Royal Gold Medal for the promotion of Architecture, annually 
given by His Majesty the King to “Some distinguished archb 
tect or man of science or letters who has designed or executed a 
building of high merit, or produced a work tending to promote or 
facilitate the knowledge of architecture or the various branches 
of science connected therewith.” 

The mode of selection is that a name is brought forward by 
the Council and submitted to the general body of members of 
this Institute, after which it is submitted to the King for his 
gracious approval. 

Amongst those to whom the Medal has been awarded, and 
who are now no longer amongst us, are Professor Cockerell, the 
first recipient in 1848; Sir Charles Barry; Owen Jones; Sir Gib 
bert Scott; Violletde'Duc ; Sir James Pennethorne; George Ed' 
mund Street ; John Pearson ; Baron von Ferstel ; F. C. Penrose ; 
H. Schliemann; Charles Garnier; Baron von Hansen; R. M. 
Hunt; Lord Leighton. 

In selecting a recipient for this honor it has almost become an 
unwritten rule to select in rotation an English architect, a foreign 
architect, and a literary man with architectural instincts. This 


1 37 


APPENDIX 


year we have somewhat departed from this rule, and, as you 
know, our Institute has selected Mr. Charles Follen McKim of 
New York, and Mr. McKim has returned us the compliment by 
crossing the Atlantic especially to receive the Medal in person 
to-night ; and here he is, I am glad to say, sate and sound with us 
this evening, and very heartily we all welcome him. 

I have said that in selecting Mr. McKim we have somewhat 
departed from our rule, for we cannot claim him as an English 
architect, we have not selected him for his literary attainments, 
and least of all can we consider him as a foreign architect. No, 
we have selected him as a highly distinguished American archb 
tect, a very near relation of ours, and a representative man, 
in order that we may show to him personally and to the whole 
world of American artists our high appreciation and admiral 
tion of the great work that marvelous country is doing on the 
other side of the world ; an appreciation not only of what they 
are doing, but also ot what we expect them to do untranv 
meled by traditions, full of youth, energy, imagination and 
initiative, and supported by almost boundless resources; and 
we are confident that as time goes on they will not only 
develop fresh types and plans of buildings, but they will, still 
mindful of the past, clothe those buildings in a language that 
will be distinctly their own. 

As I have already said, this selection has met with the full 
approval of His Majesty the King; and I venture to hope 
the presence here tomight of the Ambassador himself from 
the American people to our Court may be taken as setting the 
American seal on this selection of ours. 

And now I must introduce you to Mr. McKim a little more 
in detail, in order that not only those present, but also those 
who read these proceedings, may fully understand our choice. 

138 


APPENDIX 


I may say my facts may be depended upon, for I have received 
them from the best authority — - Mr. McKim himself. 

He was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, five'and' 
fifty years ago, and at eighteen entered Harvard University 
with a view to becoming a mining engineer. A year later, 
finding the work uncongenial, he entered the office of Mr. 
Russell Sturgis, architect, of New York, and, in the autumn of 
the same year, the Atelier Daumet in Paris, where he was pre' 
pared for, and admitted to, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, remaining 
till the outbreak of the war, some three years later. During 
this time Mr. McKim also traveled in Europe, and visited 
England in 1869, where, he tells me, through the kindness of 
Mr. Phene Spiers, Mr. Florence, and others, he was able to 
make profitable use of his time, as far as cricket matches would 
permit. He also was made an Honorary Member of the ArchP 
tectural Association. 

Returning to New York in 1870, Mr. McKim entered the 
office of the welbknown architect H. H. Richardson ; and in 
1872, at the age of twentyffive, commenced practice on his 
own account, being joined in 1877 by Mr. William Ruther' 
ford Mead, and in 1879 by Mr. Stanford White, and since that 
time they have continued their practice as “ McKim, Mead, and 
White.” 

Some drawings and photographs of Mr. McKim’s buildings 
are exhibited on the walls of this room, and a list of them will 
appear in the Journal. 

In 1887 Messrs. McKim, Mead, and White were appointed 
architects to the new public library of the City of Boston, now a 
famous building. In 1889 two Fellowships in the School of 
Architecture, Columbia University, known as the McKim Feh 
lowships, were established. In 1891 Mr. McKim was made a 


1 39 


APPENDIX 


member of a Commission of ten architects from throughout the 
United States to design the World’s Columbian Exposition at 
Chicago. In 1894 his firm were appointed architects to the 
new Capitol building of the State of Rhode Island. In 1897 the 
American Academy of Architecture in Rome was incorporated 
under the laws of the State of New York, and Mr. McKim 
was made President. In 1899 he was elected a member of the 
Academy of San Luca, and in the same year was appointed to 
serve as a member of the first Municipal Art Commission of 
the City of New York. 

In 1901 Mr. McKim was appointed a member of the Art 
Commission for the improvement of the park system of the 
District of Columbia, and assisted in drawing up the magnifi' 
cent scheme, photographs of which are exhibited here tomight. 
Here is to be an avenue 1 600 feet wide and a mile and a half 
long, architecturally treated at various points, with great public 
buildings, incorporated in the scheme. The cost is put at some 
three to four millions, some half of which has already been 
voted. A Bill has also passed Congress for locating the me' 
morial. 

Mr. McKim was elected President of the American Institute 
of Architects in 1901, and reelected in 1902, and in the same 
year was appointed by President Roosevelt to restore the 
White House, and also as architect for the new Army War 
College. 

Of the buildings erected some idea may be gained from the 
splendid series of photographs and drawings Mr. McKim has 
kindly shown us here to'night. He seems equally at home with 
a palace or a bungalow, with a university or a railway station, 
with laying out a great park scheme or arranging a charming 
little formal garden. In all I think you will find true artistic feel' 

140 


APPENDIX 


ing, nobility of plan, breadth ot treatment, absence of unneces' 
saryor meretricious ornament, and a suitability of purpose. The 
style, based largely on Italian examples, shows the influence of 
French training, and while founded on traditional lines appears 
to me to possess just that amount of individuality required, with' 
out which the best work must be dull and uninteresting. 

Then, again, Mr. McKim has set all us architects an example 
by the opportunities he has given to painters and sculptors to 
further adorn his works. The decorations of the Boston Library 
by Mr. E. A. Abbey, who I am glad to say is here tomight, and 
by Mr. Sargent, who would have liked to have been here hut is 
still abroad, are a case in point, and are well illustrated by the 
photographs here. 

And now, Mr. McKim, it only remains for me to present you 
with this Medal as an English token of our admiration and esteem 
of yourself and your colleagues. May you long live to adorn your 
country still further with your works ! 

Mr. McKim’s Response 

Mr. President, Your Excellency, Ladies, and Gentlemen: — 

I am no speaker, and if I were it would be quite beyond me 
adequately to express to you my appreciation and deep sense 
of obligation to His Gracious Majesty King Edward and to 
the members of this Royal Institute of British Architects. 

The broad philanthropy which created this Medal, not alone 
for British subjects, hut that it might help and encourage the 
successful development of the art of Architecture in other 
countries, was characteristic of the most gracious queen whose 
memory we, next to you, hold in veneration. That it should 
have a second time within a single decade come to our shores 


1 41 


APPENDIX 


is indeed cause for felicitation, since it attests, in lasting form, 
the progress and achievement your eminent body has been 
pleased to recognize in the work of your younger colleagues 
in America. 

The Medal which you do me the high honor to bestow on 
me, is pure at least in virtue of my accidental Presidency of 
the American Institute, but is, I feel, to be regarded in a far 
larger sense than as a personal recognition of the ties which 
unite the builder’s art on both sides of the Atlantic. As a spur 
and incentive, and as a token of the friendship and respect that 
for many years have been growing up between our two bodies, 
I accept with grateful pride this Medal, tendered as to my 
countrymen by the Royal Institute. I accept it for the whole 
profession in the United States, and I accept it for my assoch 
ates of twenty'five years to whom I owe everything. 

As the bearer of many messages from across the seas, I cam 
not let such an occasion as this pass by without at least briefly 
adverting to the ties which have united us in the past, and which 
must render the development of our future of something more 
than passing interest to you. I will add also a word concerning 
recent events on our side of the water. 

The early buildings of the New England coast, dating back 
to the eighteenth century, and more rarely to the seventeenth, 
from the once vice-regal town of Portsmouth, to Charleston, 
South Carolina, have happily descended to us despite political 
revolutions. Notwithstanding their simpler forms, both of com 
struction and design, made necessary by slender means and the 
circumstances of transplantation, they still reflect the mother 
country, in their excellence of construction as well as in sound 
and correct taste. Precisely the most interesting, and in their 
sphere the most admirable, architectural monuments of my native 


142 


APPENDIX 


land, private dwellings and public buildings alike, are those that 
most strongly recall their English prototypes. 

Our obligations, for instance, to Sir Christopher Wren are 
very imperfectly understood even at home, yet the cities of the 
Atlantic seaboard, especially in New England, abound in examples 
showing the influence of his school. The struggle of these land' 
marks for existence in the advancing tide of commercial pros' 
perity, before which they are gradually being swept away, is a 
melancholy daily spectacle — not alone deplorable in the loss of 
historic monuments, but for the lessons they invariably teach of 
sound proportion, simplicity, and good manners. 

Happily some of the best examples remain to us. At the seat 
of Government, for instance, our Capitol, and the home of the 
President, the White House, are both singularly animated by a 
pure taste and devoted love of beauty, not to mention the City 
Hall and the old Department buildings of the city of Washing' 
ton. Of these, for our information at home, as well as yours, let 
us gratefully acknowledge that the Capitol, though enlarged and 
changed since, was originallv designed by one William Thornton, 
the White House by a certain James Hoban, while the City Hall 
and old Department buildings were the creation of a man of the 
name of Hadfield all Englishmen ! 

I can well remember the thrill of surprise and pleasure which 
I experienced on my first visit to England, more than thirty years 
ago, in the discovery of a strange familiarity in the appearance 
of things, and in the sense of not being after all so far from home. 
Though I did not understand it then, the reason, as has been 
shown, was not far to seek! 

I will venture to refer to one more building, of the era which 
we call early and you ingloriously late, albeit of the period of 
Adam — the Octagon. 


143 


APPENDIX 


Our Institute, which has urged upon governments — national, 
state and municipal — the duty of preserving Historic Monm 
ments, has itself recently secured possession of one of the historic 
houses of America, known from its shape as the “ Octagon,” and 
designed by the same William Thornton, architect of the Capitol. 
Here in the early days were dispensed a liberal hospitality by 
President Madison, whose home it was. Under its roof, too, the 
Treaty of Ghent was signed. The house was finished in a mam 
ner befitting its importance, and to'dayis in an excellent state of 
preservation. Thus the expressed desire and often recurring 
efforts of the Institute to secure for itself a permanent home have 
been accomplished after nearly half a century of existence. May 
it typify to those who assemble in it, as well as to the people of 
the City of Washington, the spirit of public service! 

The Institute has ample reason for felicitation in both the 
increase and betterment of our own schools of architecture, in 
Harvard, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Cornell, and Chicago Univer' 
sities, as well as in the admirable and still older foundation of 
the Institute of Technology in Boston. The movement to em 
dow an American Academy of Fine Arts in Rome on the gem 
eral lines of the French Academy in the Villa Medicis is not 
new. Till now dependent for support upon the insufficient 
means at the command of the incorporators (members of the 
Institute), the number of scholars has of necessity been small, 
and the convenience for work not such as would be afforded 
by an older, well equipped, and welhendowed institution. 

Indeed we seem to be living in a new age, not only in our 
private enterprises, but in our relations with the Government. 
It was no small thing that a committee of the United States 
Senate, under the leadership of the deeply mourned Senator 
McMillan, called into consultation, officially, the Institute and 


144 


APPENDIX 


accepted the advice of its Committee in the formation of a 
commission to prepare plans for the improvement of the park 
system of the District of Columbia, including the location of 
public buildings. 

Following this lead have come frequent requests from Gov-' 
ernment officials on the various and often perplexing problems 
of their departments, so that, informally and unofficially, there 
has come to pass a seeking for expert advice as gratifying as it 
has been unusual. 

The forces which have brought about plans for the inv 
provement of the National Capital are acting throughout the 
land. Not only in the Atlantic seaboard city of New York and 
the cities of the lake region, like Buffalo, Cleveland, and St. 
Paul, but even from far away Seattle, on the Pacific Coast, 
comes the news of attempts to treat the city as a unit and to 
develop a municipality as a consistent work of art. 

It is worthy of note also that as the star of progress takes its 
western way, the effort at improvement is made with increasing 
vigor in both enthusiasm and money. 

As evidence of the times, and amongst the measures voted 
by the last (fifty'seventh) Congress for new buildings to be 
erected within the District of Columbia alone, I will quote the 
substance of a single paragraph from the Report of the Senate 
Commission of the District of Columbia, dated 14th March, 
1903 : — 

“The fifty'seventh Congress, besides the restoration of the 
White House authorized the construction of the Army War 
College and the Engineer School of Application ; a building for 
the National Museum . . the Union Railroad Station; (an 
office) building for the use of the members of the House of 
Representatives; a Municipal Building for the District of Co' 

145 


APPENDIX 


lumbia, and a Hall of Records.” The cost of these buildings 
completed will approximate to not less than fifteen millions of 
dollars, or over three millions sterling. 

I cannot close even these brief remarks without an expres' 
sion of appreciation for one to whom your eminent body so 
recently did honor. After nearly half a century of success' 
ful endeavor, during which Mr. Hunt held aloft the banner 
and fought the battles of the Institute, and in the fullness of 
his powers, at a time when his influence was greatest, he was 
suddenly taken away. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have to thank you for the great 
patience and forbearance with which you have listened to these 
fragmentary remarks that but poorly express my appreciation 
of the great honor which you have seen fit to confer upon 
me. 







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